


The Empty Space Between Us

by Jairissa



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jairissa/pseuds/Jairissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They fell in love while a country was burning; it shouldn't be a surprise they find their way back to each other as a new one rises from the ashes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The nurse skitters around Peeta and he can see how careful she is that no part of her come in contact with him; apparently his insanity is contagious. To be contrary he trips over his own feet and avoids careening into her by less than a foot. His sense of satisfaction at her disgusted expression is smug and petty; he thinks she will strike at him with the hand she has raised to fend him off, but her extensive training wins out and she smiles, sickly sweet, and leaves alone again.

He blames the Capitol and this institution of theirs for the carefully cultivated cruelty that has been so well honed in his sessions with the pugnacious Doctor Aurelius. The good doctor is firmly of the opinion that anger, and the expression thereof, is critical to mental health. During their last session he plied Peeta for information on his mother; Peeta threw a heavy metal paperweight through the window.

Doctor Aurelius, apparently delighted with his “good work”, declared they were making progress. As a reward for his temper Peeta has been given special privileges: he will be able to take short walks in the garden, eat his meals in the common dining hall, attend group therapy sessions and watch one hour of television a night. This week that is from five to six pm. The news hour.

He arrives late and find that, as the newcomer, he has been relegated to a hard-backed wooden chair near the back of the room. It offers him a view of many rows of bowed heads and, just barely, the top half of the screen. He has missed most of the first part of the program, a long and detailed list of the luxuries the Capitol citizens who remained in their city are still unable to obtain.

Peeta finds himself with less sympathy than he thinks he would once have been able to summon.

The bulk of the show is more interesting to him. A fresh-faced young woman is gravely discussing the power outages that are a result of continued outbreaks of violence in District 5. Peeta is looking forward to a greater investigation into the causes of the fighting and the state of the other Districts. He is rewarded for his attention with a whining monologue of remembrances: luxuries she has lost, lifestyles she can no longer lead, fashions that remain stagnant. The inmates around him grumble and Peeta is reminded that whatever is wrong with them, most have been trapped here longer than 13’s dubiously successful rebellion.

The television flickers to an advertisement, a cheerful, animated thing that instructs Peeta to buy the very best in home tattooing technology. He wryly decides to do just that as soon as the institution’s commissary decides to stock it and someone on the outside decides they love him enough to provide an allowance. He will hold his breath.

Then it changes back to the last segment of the evening: Trial of the Mockingjay, Day Nine. Katniss’ overly thin face is shown along with a percentage: fifty-six percent for, thirty-nine against, and four undecided, with a one percent margin of error. Peeta grips the rattling arms on his chair, glowing memories of a snarling mutt lunging for his throat overlaying the quiet, steady image on the screen. Through the screaming in his ears Peeta is able to deconstruct the numbers.

Percentage of jurors currently in favour of execution: fifty-six percent for, thirty-nine against, four percent undecided, with a one percent margin of error.

Peeta smiles and he can feel the strangeness of it, the way it twists his whole face and still doesn’t find its way to his eyes. The chair beings to crack under his grip and rather than let it shatter entirely Peeta stands, forcing his clenched hands to relax. There is a rustle of clothing as nearby patients turn to face him. Peeta keeps his eyes fixated on the screen, and on the way various parts of it twist and shine as he looks directly at the face of the rebellion.

There is a path between the inmates, linking his spot in the back of the room to the television at the front. Peeta’s feet map it before his eyes do. He looks down to find himself still dragging the chair behind him and steps to the side, twisting the seat to sit down in front of him. He can hear Haymitch’s voice describing how traumatised Katniss has been: traumatised by the loss of her sister and the hijacking of her fiance; how he doubts that she’d known what she was doing when she let that arrow fly.

Peeta growls: at Katniss who has her memories and her choices and her ability to make the most painful of shitty situations worse, and at Haymitch who is taking her side again.

This is Peeta’s choice: to pick up the chair and swing it at the brightly lit screen, taking personal satisfaction from the way it cracks down the middle of Katniss’ face on the first impact.

The pleasure of making something break apart mixes with impotent anger to create a burning kind of fury. It gives Peeta strength and lets him ignore the shards of glass, metal, wood and plastic that fly into his face and cut his hands into mounds and ribbons of flesh, bone and blood. It feeds on the screams of the patients behind him until the shattered remains of the former television fall off the wall and crumble at his feet.

He drops the chair on top of it, a headstone for an exposed grave. He is caught from behind when he lets his arms fall to his side and dragged towards the door. Peeta fights instinctively, struggling against an unknown enemy that is keeping him restrained. He lands a lucky blow with his elbow and one of the orderlies lets go, swearing. He is in the process of trying to free his other arm when he registers the opinions of the other inmates: most are various forms of upset or angry, yelling at him for destroying their treasure.

There is one that captures his attention. A middle-aged woman is cowering in the corner, her arms raised to shield her head. Through all the commotion Peeta can hear her chanting.

“No, no, no. Not again, please. I’ll be good. I’ll be good.”

Shame lodges in his throat, sharp and hot. He falls limp and is pulled, feet trailing behind him, from the room.

He doesn’t yet have a room of his own. One is scheduled to be assigned to him tonight. Peeta supposes he has saved them the trouble: the room he is hauled into is white, lacking any fixtures or furniture and padded. Peeta thinks for a moment that he will be thrown against one of the walls and left to rebound on the floor but one of the orderlies holds onto him from behind while another yanks on his arm until it is stretched painfully out in front of him.

The nurse from earlier, the one Peeta seems to have personally offended in some unknown way, wields the needle. It slides smoothly into his skin with a sharp sting, distributing its clear, viscous liquid into his bloodstream. He feels the change almost immediately, the Morphling calming the worst of the fear and taking the edge off the anger. It doesn’t eliminate all his broiling emotions, but it relieves enough of the pressure that Peeta is able to breathe again.

For a moment Peeta misses the constant numbness of the Morphling intravenous drip he has only just been weaned off. He had thought he missed feeling emotion, even painful ones, but the flatness of the drug is a sweet kind of oblivion for him, one he is so busy enjoying that he doesn’t notice until too late that there is another drug hiding behind the Morphling. It muddles his head and leeches the feeling from his limbs and it is only the strong arms of the orderly that keep him upright.

Those arms fall away and the last thing Peeta remembers as he collapses into a sleeping heap on the floor is another needle sewing together his un-anaesthetised skin.

@-->\-- 

The cell is cold when he wakes. He has enough time on waking to pull himself upright and wipe the dried blood from the injection site. His hands are covered in a patchwork of stitches that have left blood smears all their own and Peeta gives up entirely on cleaning himself up. They must be monitoring him as he does not stay there long.

He turns his head away from the door when a nurse opens it, half-expecting the same grumpy witch from the night shift. This one is younger, softer and without the quiet judgement in her eyes. She tutts over his hands like a mother hen, raiding supplies from the cart she has brought with her.

“This is a bit of a mess,” she says sympathetically, with a click of her tongue. Peeta avoids looking directly at her: there is the faintest hint of a dark braid tucked behind her ear and she seems too kind to want to kill her this early in the morning.

She must be one of the volunteers from District 6. The capitol nurses seem to despise him. The ones from 6 still seem to have a soft spot for him after his treatment of their District-mate in the Quarter Quell. They treat him like a fellow human and are stubborn enough to ignore the many times he has given them reason not to.

“Does this hurt?” She probes when Peeta remains silent. It does, however gently she wipes his fingers down with antiseptic and covers them with bandages. He shrugs and trains his eyes on the wall, clenching his teeth in an effort to ignore the flapping of the dark plait as she ministrates to his aching hands.

“When’s my appointment?” Peeta asks flatly. All shows of violence so far have been followed by an interview with Doctor Aurelius, deconstructing his actions and their motivations; he doubts a few white cloths covering his own handiwork will allow him to escape altogether.

“We want to make sure you’re better, first,” his nurse assures him. He is not listening for it, but Peeta can hear the undercurrents of desperation and unhappiness behind the practised cheer.

“Is it me?” He asks, struggling to turn his head to look at her. He catches a glimpse of her eyes; they are brown and soft, empty of guile, and Peeta’s voice softens. “Or is it the job?”

He keeps his gaze steadily on her face as it crumbles. If she weren’t holding so tightly to his injured hands he would offer her a bandage as a tissue for the tears that begin to wind their way down her pale face.

“We weren’t trained for this,” she blurts out. Her voice cracks on the word “trained” and Peeta winces, but he does not give in to the desire to pull his hands away. The nurse breaks down into sobs. Peeta hasn’t considered how pretty tears can be, nor how much they reveal about the softness at the core of a person. “And...”

She looks at him then, helpless, and withdraws a little inside herself. Peeta guesses that she has been specifically instructed not to reveal anything of herself to the patients. He also suspects that she must be very young, possibly more so than himself, and the discretion that comes with years and hardship hasn’t fully had time to develop.

“And?” Peeta prompts. The girl’s shoulders shake with the effort to contain her tears and Peeta wishes he could pass on some of his own hard-won tolerance to them.

“You’re just so sad!” She confesses finally. Peeta raises his eyebrows. The nurse blanches; Peeta supposes at some point he should learn her name, but her naive statement hasn’t inclined him to indulge her. “I didn’t mean it like that. I knew you were going to be sad, but...”

She rakes her hands through the tendrils escaping her braid, dislodging a great deal more of them. She takes a deep breath, a gesture Peeta recognises as utterly useless in calming himself. She must have a smaller wave of emotion to wade through because she is able to regain some pretense of dignity.

“I know what sadness looks like,” she continues stiffly and Peeta adds his young aide to the list of people he has offended. “I’ve studied mind sicknesses. That’s why they sent me here.”

She looks at him now, and he lets himself see all the despair, helplessness and regret that she has been releasing into a pillow each night. Peeta thinks he can feel her pain adding onto his own and the weight of it crushes at his chest, until the aching of his still-held hands is the only thing allowing him to concentrate on anything else.

“I expected most of this. All these broken people. But you,” she finishes and Peeta feels the censure cut deep within him, tangling itself with everything else he no longer wishes to feel. “You were so strong for her. I just thought you were that strong for yourself, too.”

Peeta looks away, cursing himself for asking. The nurse looks a little ashamed and quite proud of herself. He would contemplate how many people have wanted to say exactly that to him, but the thought of that makes the tightening in his chest worse.

“Well, even pearls crack when hit right,” he mutters, thinking of a clock-surrounded ocean and the sweet flesh of shellfish.

“Don’t you mean diamonds?” The girl asks, baffled.

“No,” Peeta says, closing his eyes to block her out. He tugs his hands away and tucks them demurely in his lap. “When’s my appointment? Or do I get out of it today?”

Perhaps it is his imagination, how he thinks he can sense the reprimand in the air, but the orderlies arrive swiftly and pull him to his feet. There is no point in fighting; he may walk with them attached to his arms or he will be dragged that way. He seems to have lost the privilege of walking the hallways alone.

He keeps his eyes shut during the walk, making a game of counting his steps and memorising the direction. It is a good way to clear the remainder of the cobwebs from his mind and retrain himself into thinking properly. The asylum is large; Peeta numbers hundreds of footsteps before he is left, upright, outside the red-painted door that blocks him from Doctor Aurelius’ office.

“You may come in, Peeta,” the doctor’s deep voice calls from the den he has created for himself. Peeta had forgotten how few places were not covered by cameras and microphones; no doubt Doctor Aurelius is fully apprised of Peeta’s conversation with his recent recruit.

“Thank you,” Peeta says, a bite of sarcasm in his voice as he opens the door. “I appreciate it.”

Doctor Aurelius is always amused when he talks to Peeta. They once spent a full session discussing why Peeta was so entertaining. “Why not” became Peeta’s answer to everything for a week afterwards. This, too, was amusing.

Peeta sits in front of the desk as the door springs shut behind him. Some days he begins his ranting almost immediately, informing his therapist of exactly what he thought of his situation; others he attempted to bait Doctor Aurelius to some hypocrisy that Peeta could use against him.

Today he settles on silence. It was a tactic that had failed him in the past. Doctor Aurelius is more than capable of staring at Peeta for the length of the session, unwilling to break Peeta’s stare. The difference today is in him, and his surety that he had nothing at all to say to the man.

In the twisted joke Peeta has come to recognise as life, Doctor Aurelius has a great many things to say to him today.

“I’d say you’ve had an interesting day,” the doctor informs him dryly. “But I suppose that would be rather trite, wouldn’t it?”

Peeta concentrates on the paperweight that has replaced the misshapen metal lump that had once sat on the desk. There are bushes and strange people that congregate under Doctor Aurelius’ window. Perhaps it was claimed by one of these, as the presence of a replacement is a strong indication that it is still missing. This one is glass, delicately filled with flowers and small figurines, and its fragility represents an irresponsible form of optimism to Peeta.

“Would it help you to throw it?” The doctor asks, following where Peeta looks. Peeta refuses to show that he is startled and shakes his head. “Excellent, excellent.”

There is a scratching of pen on paper, a strange anachronism for a man who has access to all the technology of the Capitol. Peeta’s curiosity has ranged from mild to burning at various sojourns to this office. He is confident that any questions that do not relate directly to himself will be firmly redirected, so he files the image away under his list of things that he is not allowed to know.

They remain locked in combative silence; Peeta is inexplicably proud that he has developed the strength of late not to be the first to break.

“We can stay here for days if you wish it, Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius sighs through his lecturing tone.

“You’ve run out of people to torment?” Peeta asks. It is barely detectable, but Peeta is astonished to see a glare on the good doctor’s face.

“I’ll clear my schedule.” Impatience, a distinct break from the determinedly soothing voice. Peeta hadn’t realised Doctor Aurelius was such a fan of television, nor that the staff did not have access to their own amenities rather than needing to share with those they were presiding over.

“That doesn’t seem very fair to them,” Peeta muses. “Imagine the progress that could be made in the time you’re taking away from them.”

Peeta doesn't know where this practice of needling has come from. It is an uncomfortable sort of fun, a dark kind of need that is pulled up from a part of himself he doesn’t want to fully examine. Less _fun_ , perhaps, than the vicious satisfaction he had always so disliked in the bullies from home. Is it the Capitol that has brought this out in him or is it a facet of himself that would always have revealed itself if given enough time?

“Enough, Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius says, exhaustion warring with a mild irritation. It is possible this is the most anger the man will ever allow himself to show. The place inside of Peeta that still forces himself to feel shame throbs in agreement, manifesting more like nausea than any emotion he can define. “You’re being childish.”

In the eyes of the law Peeta is indeed a child; he is surprised how pleased he feels with himself when he bites that retort back. It is not a proper apology, not yet, but he supposes it might suffice as one in its own way.

When the silence extends again it is without recrimination and Peeta begins to feel himself relax.

“You know why you’re here,” Doctor Aurelius reminds him when Peeta is at risk of getting lost in an insect floating past the window.

“To talk about last night,” Peeta answers in the same tone. “And to make amends through endless discussion for my destruction of the television.”

“No one wants you to make amends for anything, Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius insists, sincerely, and Peeta almost allows himself to fall into the trap of believing it. “We want you to feel better.”

“Why do any of you care?” Peeta asks rhetorically. It has been asked and not answered so often he may as well be kicking a dead donkey.

“You’re not able to understand why anyone would not want to help the boy we knew?” The doctor surprises him with the closest thing he has received to a response. He should be comforted and flattered by the attention.

“Not when you spent so much time trying to kill him, no,” Peeta snaps, twisting his bandaged hands agitatedly in his lap. He has never understood why the Capitol takes so much enjoyment in creating heroes when their next actions were dedicated so completely to tearing them down again. It wasn’t just tragic, it was _wasteful_ , and Peeta is so very tired of waste.

“We’re beginning to see what a mistake that was,” Doctor Aurelius says quietly and for the first time Peeta hears a real emotion. Shame, deeper perhaps even than his own. Peeta laughs anyway, because he doesn’t think he will ever see why so many people had to die to show these selfish people what they were doing wrong. The doctor smiles at him, sadly. “Yes, I suppose that may well be amusing to you.”

“I’m not amused,” Peeta says, but he is laughing none the less. “I’m angry.”

“You have every right to that, too,” Doctor Aurelius agrees, fiddling with the pen he uses to record the details of Peeta’s soul. “Is that why you attacked the television? Because you were angry at how ‘we’ are treating Katniss?”

Peeta’s smile dropped from his face and he started as if he had been scalded. _Katniss, Katniss Everdeen, Mutt, This is not real, NO, I will not play this game._

“She’s doing that to herself,” Peeta snarls and forces the game from his mind. It had been a useful device to prevent himself killing her when she had a necessary mission to fill. He knows now that he need never see her again and Peeta doesn’t feel the need to torture himself further.

“How so?” The doctor sounds inappropriately interested. Peeta forces back the panic that she is, or soon will be, shut up in here with him. He will cause another scene, find something to destroy that they will put him away forever and never force him to be in her presence again.

“She’s a survivor,” Peeta says, crossing his arms protectively over his chest. “That’s what she does, survives, damn whoever gets in her way.”

“Interesting,” Doctor Aurelius finds this fascinating enough to write down in his thick little notebook, thumbing through the pages until he can note the same information under another heading. He looks up at Peeta, far more cheerful now, as though Peeta has given him the key to a very troublesome lock. “Is that why you’re angry with her? Her disinclination to ‘survive’ in this instance?”

Peeta snorts; for all the man’s supposed training he gets the wrong of it more often than not. He would think it a gambit if the doctor didn’t seem so utterly perplexed every time Peeta acted contrarily to the smitten young boy the Capitol had first met on Caesar Flickerman’s soundstage.

“Let her finish herself off,” Peeta says defiantly. Let her continue what ridiculous path she has set herself on this time. Perhaps if she is successful the insistent tugging between them would be broken. Peeta would be free. “I don’t care.”

“Are you sure about that?” It is phrased as a question, but the flatness in Doctor Aurelius’ tone turns it into a statement. Peeta looks at him incredulously; how on earth could he be expected not to be sure? “You loved her once.”

“No, I didn’t,” Peeta pushes through the closing of his throat. He can remember it clearly, the utterly rational hatred he had always held for her. Since they were children and his father had pointed out the child of the woman who _should_ have been his mother, and she had gone on to show off in that horrible high-pitched voice. “That was a lie.”

It is easy, and comfortable, to believe that. It leaves no war waging inside him, no internal battles to fight, and grants him the closest thing he can come to a measure of peace.

“Hmm,” the doctor hums the word, rumbling a little at the end. Peeta sees a flash of light from the corner of his eye. There is a television there, large and paper thin; he had thought it an oddly reflecting mirror for the not-so-vain. On it he sees himself, shining and unbroken. He is wrapped around Katniss like the gown she is sheathed in, kissing her as though she were as necessary to him as oxygen.

“Turn it off,” Peeta growls as the couple on the screen are forced apart. They settle themselves on a small loveseat and it is not just the memory of closeness that frightens him so. It is the soppy expression on his face, and the way that, just by looking at her, the boy can make the girl incandescently beautiful through the force of his love for her. It shines as brightly as her dress, as the rush of glowing memories he cannot fight back. “It’s not real.”

“Yes it is,” Doctor Aurelius disagrees calmly. Peeta throws himself from his chair and it clatters loudly to the ground. He paces, stopping a hair’s breadth from each wall before he turns, and stabs his finger at the screen.

“ _Turn it off_ ,” Peeta screams, astounded that the windows don’t shake as badly as he is.

“No.” It is simple, decisive, and the sound that Peeta makes is animal, very like the Mutt he had been convinced Katniss had become. He reaches for the paperweight he had been offered earlier and throws it at the screen. The shattering glass Peeta had anticipated; the utter lack of damage to the screen he had not. Peeta scrambles for something else, rummaging furiously around the desk but the doctor seems to have been prepared: all the heavy objects Peeta thinks he remembers have been removed.

Not that his memory is to be trusted of late.

He can feel his anger slipping away and he lacks the props and incentives to fuel it further. He grasps for the last of it anyway, knowing that giving up to a weakness and Peeta has displayed far enough of that for the Capitol. Today he will display the strength he has left.

The only object heavy enough is Doctor Aurelius’ notebook and he can see from the way the man’s fingers are clutched around it he will be unable to pry it from his hands. He contemplates trying for it anyway and makes the mistake of meeting the doctor’s eyes. There is none of the fear his display should evoke, nor apprehension. Peeta glares, but he is already questioning to himself what the point of trying to frighten an unflappable man is.

“The screen is of better quality than the one in the common room,” Doctor Aurelius informed him pointlessly; Peeta has deduced that already. “Nor will a tantrum convince me to turn it off.”

Peeta makes a childish sound of outrage, which does little to improve the infantile display that even he is aware of. He looks at the overturned chair in distaste but makes no move to right it. He means to focus his eyes on anything but the wall television, though his eyes betray him and he cannot help slanting his eyes towards every change of light. He may as well watch it outright for the comprehensiveness of the overview he gets.

“You see it there in front of you,” Doctor Aurelius says in a monotone that Peeta suspects is meant to be hypnotic. If his nerves were not so jangled he may well have fallen prey to it himself. “Does it look like a lie to you?”

“It feels like one,” Peeta says. Truth and lies are not, as he once thought, absolute. They are relative and easily changeable, depending on foundations as weak and fragile as the whims of a self-centred human being. He has also come to realise that there is not a person alive who is not self-centred.

On the screen Katniss is smiling winningly at him, the hospitals and laboratories of District 6 a stark background against their fineries. There is another disconnect that comes to him abruptly: how can he reconcile this untruth of hers with the blunt girl in 13 who seemed unwilling to lie about anything? Either way, he supposes, at least one of them is false, perhaps both. Why is it left to him to decipher the code?

“Feelings can mislead us,” the Doctor offers as a nugget of great wisdom. Peeta looks at him queerly, unable to decide whether the man is a genius or a very great idiot.

“So can people,” he counters and the doctor looks back at him as though Peeta is entirely missing the point.

“Why are you so intent on holding on to...this?” Doctor Aurelius gestures at him as he says this, and at the newly broken paperweight. “Does it make you happy?”

“Happy? Of course not, but happiness isn’t the object, is it?” Peeta blurts out. Doctor Aurelius raises his eyebrow and Peeta takes a moment to puzzle out his own words, taking them apart and putting them back together until they make sense again. “It’s not the point.”

“Then what is?” The doctor asks and he sounds so blatantly baffled that Peeta can almost believe that he cares, in a more sincere and real way than he had believed someone from the Capitol is capable of.

“Me!” Peeta exclaims, raising his palms up to face the ceiling. “For once, _me_. What _I_ want, what _I_ need. Being myself and putting myself first without needing to worry about anyone else using me to do the same for them. Not letting anyone else control me.”

Peeta is astounded at himself for the speech. He is pleased with himself for piecing it together, and finally, after all his outbursts, understanding what has been driving them. It is a breakthrough, he is sure of it. Yet it is exceptionally selfish, the same selfishness he is fighting against, and he is busy contemplating that divide when Doctor Aurelius punches him in the gut.

“Good gracious, Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius says with such an air of baffled wonder that Peeta is momentarily confused with himself. “What part of these recent tantrums of yours haven’t been dictated by someone else?”

The pressure in his stomach, a black hole of pain and fear, threatens to expand and swallow him whole. The only way to pull himself out is to prove, without any doubt allowed, that this current theory of Doctor Aurelius’ is complete garbage.

“Don’t bother,” Doctor Aurelius says baldly, sketching a faint outline of a table on a scrap of paper. Before it is flipped over Peeta sees a WARNING and a MISSING label, the sort issued when a dangerous inmate escapes from here or one of the sister institutes Doctor Aurelius often leaves to visit. "You can't convince me."

In his table he fills in a set of labels down the left-most column. Peeta cranes his neck to see them, breath coming in gasps. For half a second he almost believes that whatever is being written will make a difference, and somehow manage to save him.

The list is short. It contains the words Katniss, District 12, The Capitol, The Games and The Rebellion.

Each of these items eats at him in different ways. His gasping breath speeds up more and the words in front of him seem to swim. It is this that lets him grasp on to the edges of his reality, seeing the words as independent squiggles rather than symbols that make any sort of sense. He is beginning to calm down and breath again, so of course Doctor Aurelius continues to do his best to drive Peeta into his dark place and slaps his open palm down on the desk.

Peeta doesn’t do well with loud noises, hasn’t since his first Games, and it is worse with the ones he doesn’t see coming. If he was seated he may well have fallen out of his chair; instead he lands unsteadily on the balls of his feet, rocking back and forth to regain his balance.

“They’re just words,” Peeta insists to himself, loudly, as if Doctor Aurelius were not watching him with undisguised eagerness.

“No, they’re not,” the other part of Peeta, the one that doesn’t like to lie to anyone, especially himself, argues. “If they’re just words, why are you yelling?”

“I’m not yelling,” Peeta yells at the irritation. “And yes they are, they’re _words_ and words can’t hurt anyone-”

He is cut off with a soft intonation of his name - “ _Peeta._ ” - so quietly that he has to think for a moment before he understands that the voice isn’t in his head.

“Peeta, it’s all right. You’re safe here.”

Safe is a ridiculous word, and a meaningless one, now. Even here, in the bizarre land of doctors, endless talking and soothing medications he is not safe. He is still chased by his nightmares, his memories, and the darkness inside him that clamours for more of him than Peeta has left to give.

“Then get rid of that,” Peeta gestures to the paper.

“We will, in a moment,” Doctor Aurelius soothes him. Peeta is pushed to the end of his endurance, taut with hatred for himself and everything around him and he grasps for the lifeline of someone who cares, however false it is, and moans helplessly.

He sits, not on the overturned chair, but on the floor next to it and leans his tear-wet cheek against one of the legs.

“What do you want?” He begs, exhausted and pathetic.

“You to tell me the first thing that comes in to your mind when I show you these,” Doctor Aurelius says, raising his hand to stall protests that Peeta doesn’t make. “Basic and obvious, I know, but allow me to make my point. Katniss.”

“I hate her,” Peeta hisses.

“District 12,” Doctor Aurelius continues.

“She destroyed it.”

“The Capitol.”

“Did this to me.”

“The Games?”

“A pointless waste of human life.”

“And the rebellion,” Doctor Aurelius finishes with relish.

“A pointless waste of human life,” Peeta repeats the party line. He is surprised that the words appear in his mind, fully formed and shining. He had thought they were his own until he sees that; maybe they still are and his own thoughts can glow with the force of his conviction.

The doctor pauses, tapping his pen thoughtfully against the desk. Peeta picks at the flaking bandage on his left hand, pulling white threads until they break and dropping them on the floor. Let the Capitol cleaners, if such things really exist, clean them up.

“Peeta, you’ve been here over a month. I flatter myself that in between that time and your games, I know something about you.” Doctor Aurelius is serious and kind and Peeta thinks he must practice those expressions in front of a mirror to get them so very perfect. He snorts because he has to maintain the crumbling wall somehow. It comes out through his blocked nose as a sniff and a trace of sympathy is added to the mix. “These words, these thoughts, they aren’t yours. They’ve been given to you, and by continuing to perpetuate them you’re not putting yourself first. You’re letting a great number of people control you.”

“I get that,” Peeta twists his mouth in a simulacrum of a smile.

“Then why on earth are you doing this?” Doctor Aurelius asks, perplexed, and Peeta begins to understand the doctor’s fascination with him: he is a puzzle that is not easily solved.

“Because it’s in there,” Peeta says, his eyes tracing the whorls in the wood. He could not look the doctor in the eyes if he wanted to, the desk is blocking his way. Perhaps Doctor Aurelius is craning his neck to see Peeta, but it is far more likely that he has his eye on one of the hidden cameras, enjoying a perfect view. “It’s inside me, buried deep, and I can’t pull it out. I fight it, with everything, but that...that’s not always enough, and those thoughts aren’t mine. I _know_ that. But if I choose them now, choose to feel them and not fight them...well, at least it’s my choice, right?”

Doctor Aurelius eyes him thoughtfully. He has stopped writing, but Peeta is not naive enough to think that means it will not be recorded on his file permanently.

“No, not really,” he says finally and Peeta’s chest heaves with silent sobs. He expected this answer, has known it for some time, but knowing it doesn’t make a lick of a difference. “They’re still something that was introduced into you, have invaded you in a sense. You may ‘choose’ to go along with them, but that only concedes the battle, not the war.”

“I can’t keep fighting it,” Peeta whispers. He is surprised anyone can hear it. “It’s too much.”

“It is too much for one person,” Doctor Aurelius agrees. “But you’re not alone here, Peeta. Why don’t you let us help you?”

Peeta pulls himself to his feet and looks the doctor in the eye. He thinks of the war he is fighting and how very tired of everything he is. So he meets the doctor’s gaze and he nods.


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Profanity and mentions of domestic violence.
> 
> Based on prompt _I'm broken_ from the livejournal community un_love_you.

Today is “better”. Peeta is learning to view his mental state in relative terms. Better can mean many things. Today it means that he has found the willpower to break through his conditioning and refrain from committing violence against innocent parties. He has broken down in tears, but only in the privacy of his own room. Most importantly in his one on one sessions with Doctor Aurelius he is so thoroughly able to distinguish his fake and shining memories from his real ones that he does nothing more than blanch in disgust when he sees himself kissing Katniss on a beautiful golden beach.

“Let’s talk about that expression,” Doctor Aurelius decides, pausing the video. The image of Katniss remains, her palm resting against Peeta’s cheek. She is smiling, soft and tender, which is how Peeta knows it is a lie: Katniss is not capable of that sort of emotion for anyone but her sister.

“I don’t want to,” Peeta says. He doesn’t know why he bothers. Hesitation is a challenge to Doctor Aurelius, as are secrets. The parts of him that Peeta wants to keep to himself are the ones the doctor is most determined to ferret out and put on display.

“Why not?” Doctor Aurelius asks him. In a way it helps. Knowing _why_ he is frightened of something is the clearest path to cutting out the roots it grows from. He has learned much from exploring his fears this way, but there is nothing else to learn here, no great secret waiting to burst.

“Because I’ve been having a good day.” Peeta sighs, leaning back in his chair. “And I don’t want to talk about her when I’m having a good day.”

“You’ve been doing so much better with the memories,” Doctor Aurelius reminds him, ever his faithful cheerleader.

“It has nothing to do with the memories,” Peeta says with a roll of his eyes. He is coming to dislike feeling as though he is being condescended to. “I just don’t like her.”

“Interesting,” Doctor Aurelius’ eyes are narrow as he records this discovery in his latest notebook. The man is a prodigious notetaker. This is the third notebook Peeta has seen in the two months he has been here. He can't imagine what goes in them. Surely no group of people, even one as large as this, could possibly be so very interesting. “So you are, indeed, doing better with segregating the memories?”

“You just said I was,” Peeta points out. He is not sure that he would say he is doing better with the memories so much as they seem to be haunting him less. There is a distinction there, although he is not sure how to articulate where the line is.

“Is that why you had an argument with yourself in the cafeteria on Tuesday?” the Doctor asks, neatly springing his trap. Peeta makes a small sound in his throat, a strange combination of groan and whimper. Tuesday had been a bad day: he had woken up screaming, lost in faceless nightmares, and remained that way the rest of the day.

“That wasn’t about Katniss,” Peeta admits in a small voice. He still feels a thrill of pride whenever he can say the name Katniss without a snarl. Desensitisation is a brilliant thing; he practiced it on a picture of the plant in his spare time for nearly a week until even his long-suffering roommate was ready to raise her voice to him. “It was something else.”

The expectant expression on Doctor Aurelius’ face is, to Peeta at least, overkill. He will cave under the pressure, they both know this. The only variable is how he will justify it to himself. Will he give in quietly because it is easier, or will he wait it out and hold on to his pride?

He chooses quietly today. Pride he has conceded many times, it is not worth trading his good day for frustration and failure.

“I thought I heard something,” Peeta admits. He doesn’t like it, he has been fighting hard against the Capitol-induced visual hallucinations, and the introduction of auditory ones has left him petrified. He has done his best not to think about it at all until he can discuss it with the doctor. Now that he is here the words he practiced freeze in his throat, held back by the tightness that always comes with this frantic beating of his heart.

“I heard a girl screaming,” Peeta whispers, holding on to the soft rubber ball he has kept in his lap. It was one of the first calming treatments he learned: squeeze tightly on the ball when he is upset. If he truly feels the need to hurt someone, he should use the paintbox he has been allocated in the art room to paint their face on it until the urge has passed. For a while it was Katniss, refreshed daily. Now it alternates between Doctor Aurelius after a hard session, Haymitch when he has seen the man’s smug face on television and his own, on the days he retains his sense of self enough to be disgusted at what he has become.

“You checked...” Doctor Aurelius leads, leaving Peeta to finish the sentence in his head. Yes, he checked _the list_ , the mental checklist he is meant to run through whenever he is startled into terror: What are his surroundings? What in his current environment could account for what he has seen or heard? Is there a safe space he can retreat to, to consider his options? Is he able to control himself enough to ask for help?

It is a haphazard list, containing only the essentials for an emergency, and boils down to two simple concepts: is there an obvious answer to what has scared him? Can he get himself somewhere quiet enough to think logically? The answer is almost always yes; when it is no, Peeta knows that he is in a great deal of trouble.

“Yeah,” Peeta says, timing the clenching of his fingers around his toy with the thumping of his pulse in the headache gathering at his temples. He recites the particulars, methodically and quietly. “I was at the nurse’s station, getting my medication modification sheet signed. Doctor Verrius’ office door was open, but I couldn’t see a television or radio. And there was a girl screaming. She sounded like Johanna, when we were...when we were there.”

Peeta’s voice breaks half-way through and he reaches shamefully for the tissues Doctor Aurelius offers him. He will never get over the embarrassment of crying in front of this always composed man. It is only because he is reaching out that he sees the shadow crossing over the man’s face.

“We’ll need to talk about that next time,” Doctor Aurelius decides, closing his notebook with a thud, his sign that their session is over. “I’ll consult with my colleague in the meantime.”

The smile that transforms the doctor’s face is so sincere that Peeta almost lets himself think that he imagined the darkness. He runs through his list one thing at a time: he is safe here, he is in control and today he is trusting himself. The obvious solution is that he did not imagine anything.

“I’d rather...” Peeta starts hesitantly. He still has trouble asserting himself some days, but he is getting better each time he practices.

“Next time, Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius pushes, and Peeta is so relieved to see the traces of darkness lingering around the man’s eyes that he won't protest. He will bring it up in group instead. He is not sure what the purpose of those sessions is meant to be. The weak-willed young District 6 girl who leads them is entirely unable to keep them under control, and so the majority of the time is spent complaining about their therapists and their fellow patients.

He is still repeating his questions to himself as he lets himself out. Repetition is the only way he can trust his memory of late and even this is not foolproof.

\--#--@ @--#--

Peeta knocks on the door to his room before he enters. He is under the impression that it is rather unusual to have opposite-sex roommates, but Peeta’s placement is a special case. The institution is overcrowded and becoming more so each day, with Capitol refugees and traumatised victors and Peacekeepers being constantly trucked in. This is where the “elite” insanity is treated and he should consider himself lucky.

He has been given Julia because Doctor Aurelius believes they have something to teach each other. For Peeta that consists of being polite and waiting at the door until he is invited in so that Julia feels as though she has some control over her immediate environment. He guesses that her role is to teach him manners and kindness again. Her task is far more difficult.

“Come in.” Even when asserting herself Julia’s voice wavers when she talks. She is the petite middle-aged woman that he terrified so badly the night he destroyed Katniss by proxy. She has mostly forgiven him, but she still flinches when he makes a sudden movement. Peeta deserves it.

He is surprised, when he opens the door, that he could hear her at all. She is fully dressed on her bed, curled tightly into herself. Her standard-issue beige sheet is pulled up to cover most of her face. Through the dimness of the unlit room Peeta can see the fabric around her eyes is wet through.

The old Peeta would know some comforting words, a form of empathy to help the crumpled form remember that she is not alone. The remains of that Peeta puts his hands to his chest, trying to hold the pain, the frustration, the anger and the helplessness in with external pressure. He sits in the chair by her bed and pats his hand awkwardly where he thinks her shoulder is.

“Marcus was here today,” she whispers and Peeta’s hand stills. He sucks in his breath to bite back string of curses he has wanted to unleash at Julia’s husband since he heard her story. He had suspected most of it; he recognised the cringing and cowering. Young Peeta, before he had found the strength that was subsequently robbed from him, felt the same.

“Why do they let him in?” Peeta asks wonderingly. He knows that a high value is placed here on facing fears, but he cannot understand why they subject Julia to it. Even Peeta, as self-obsessed as he has made himself, can see that the woman is far too fragile to face her tormentor.

“He put me here,” Julia says, so quietly that Peeta has to puzzle the words together. His eyes widen and the throaty growl that escapes him counts as justifiable fury, or will by the time he sees his doctor.

“How?” He asks, which is really shorthand for the questions he cannot squeeze past his anger. He wants to rage and tear the room apart, but Julia is unable to handle anything more than mild irritation; she hasn’t yet learned to decipher the difference between being the inspiration and being the target. Any temper Peeta displays now will be assumed to be directed at her and she will shut down even further. Peeta thinks he has frightened her enough already.

“You don’t know who he is?” She asks, astonishment evident. He flashes a look at her, surprised she hasn’t pushed him away. He resumes rubbing her shoulder in slow, soothing circular motions, looking at the grubby wall. It is easier to pretend that she is the terrified dog he rescued as a boy: if he let it come to him, and looked away when it did, he would be rewarded with a warm belly to rub. If he broke the rules, the dog would whimper and cower until he left again.

Treating his roommate like a stray dog. Peeta adds this to his growing list of why his is a terrible person.

“Unless he was actively trying to kill me, I probably didn’t have much time to get to know him,” Peeta reminds her. His time around Katniss must have been instructive, and he has never been this bad with words before. He seems to have absorbed by osmosis exactly the wrong thing to say.

The tenseness of the shoulder blade is Peeta’s only indication that Julia has become defensive and he snatches his hand away immediately.

“He was too busy trying to kill me, I think,” Julia chokes out and Peeta closes his eyes. He wonders how much more she has to shame him before he learns that being thoughtless and insensitive only works when you’re like Haymitch and don’t much care what anyone thinks.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and means it. This, too, is new: the sympathy for someone from the Capitol. They are not meant to have problems. They are meant to be the overindulged blank slates that he can project all his anger and hatred on to so it no longer crawls inside him, leaving black, shiny trails of pain and fear behind it.

“I hoped he’d get arrested when the President died,” Julia confides, sounding so ashamed of herself that Peeta feels the burning tears in his own eyes. “He always said they were such good friends, and when I heard everything happening from my room...well, I hoped.”

“You’re allowed to,” Peeta says gently. It is one of the hardest lessons he has learned here, and one of his favourites: in the safety of your own mind you can think whatever you like, even if it is replaying your desire to massacre the people you hate over and over again. It is the only truly safe space.

“I was too loud when the Peacekeepers came,” Julia told him. He can see the guilt, the mirror of his own, written on her face. “I wouldn’t behave, so he put me here. I can’t embarrass him here.”

“I don’t get how they can just do that,” Peeta questions. Julia must hear the emphasis in his voice because she whimpers, curling further in on herself. Peeta counts to ten, silently, and reminds himself this is not his fault, he is not allowed to take the blame for how others respond to his perfectly polite conversational overtones. He can control his own reactions, and only those. It is not in his recovery plan to take on others’ problems as his own.

He stays in his chair because there is nowhere else to go. He wants to run before he hears more of this story. The overview is sad enough, Peeta isn't sure if he is able to maintain any semblance of a _good day_ with Julia’s tale weighing on him. Still, it is a miracle at all that Julia has opened herself up to anyone, so he makes stays still and listens.

“He hurt me,” Julia chokes out, and she sounds so childlike that Peeta briefly stops seeing a fully grown woman in the bed. Peeta had thought all her scars were on the inside until he had accidentally walked in on her changing one day. Julia’s husband had been clever: all the cigarette burns and whipping scars had been where clothing could easily cover them. He wonders if even Julia’s nearly-grown children knew they were there.

“I know,” Peeta says tritely. “I’m sorry.”

Julia sniffles in her cocoon of sheets and Peeta closes his eyes. He cannot block it out, not entirely, but he can transmute it somewhat if he concentrates properly. The soft crying can become a wind-chilled sniffle, and Peeta can be back in District 12, his face turned upwards to catch the first drops of a late autumn rain. He can feel the droplets on his face when he sees movement at the edge of his vision. A group of mutts, led by a petite teenage girl with a long, dark braid have circled him, cutting off the escape routes he has planned. The dark-haired girl takes a step towards him and bursts into flames that quickly spread, engulfing the street where he stands.

 _NO_.

Peeta forces his eyes open with a pained gasp. Even his own daydreams are uncontrollable to him.

Julia is watching him, her dark eyes wide. She is holding the sheet away from her face, enough for Peeta to see the way her lip is trembling. Her hand is shaking in tune with it and Peeta is more than a little stunned when it reaches towards him, patting his wrist awkwardly.

“You’re fragile,” Julia nods, once, examining the curve of her fingertips. Peeta flicks an apprehensive glance around the room to make sure that the hospital is not the imagination and they are not both about to burn. Julia must think something similar because she checks that her hands have not been burned. Her eyes are tear-bright, but her smile looks real. “So was I, in the end - that’s how he got away with it.”

Peeta nods back, because he understands that fragility can be a weapon too.

“At least it’s good to be away,” Peeta offers. He tries to go home in his dreams, but he knows it is not the same. His home has been burned, the victim of a war he had been manipulated into fighting, and dreams are the only way he can reach it now. He does not want the reality of razed streets and broken futures.

“No,” Julia surprises him. “I want to go home more than anything.”

“But _why_?” Peeta blurts out. He gestures to their room, done up in ‘soothing’ shades of blue and green. It is spartan, their beds are simple and bolted to the floor, their clothes stacked on open shelves. They have a chair each and a window to share. The window is barred from the inside, and there are no curtains. He has never had much more, has never wanted for many material possessions, but it makes a small amount of sense to him that someone might. The strings Julia’s would come with make a it a great deal more unfathomable.

“It’s my home,” Julia tells him wistfully and she looks almost happy when she speaks. “It’s my place in the world.”

“He can’t hurt you here,” Peeta says quietly, trying to stave off the sadness that always takes over his face when she remembers she cannot have what she wants. She looks at him with more backbone than he has ever seen from her, and a large dose of pity.

“Yes, he can,” she says and brushes her fingertips over Peeta’s heart. The skin freezes and in the darkening light her eyes look almost grey. Peeta nods, reluctantly; the scars you can’t see are more debilitating than the ones you can. On cold days it is his missing leg that aches the most and in his nightmares it is not the gouged out tracker that hurts him, it's the man he killed.

“Not as much,” Peeta mutters, because he can no longer stomach being wrong: it happens far too often here, and with the things he is most sure about.

“He had my body out there,” Julia says, and she turns her head towards the window and the setting of the sun. “He has everything in here.”

Peeta looks at her frail arms, and the way she gets lost in the beauty of things she sees outside. He can’t understand why she would want to go home but it seems to remain a happy memory for her. He is not sure if it is spring or summer now, but if the bakery were still standing it would be releasing the last of its fragrances into the warming air and the children on the street would be gathering around to trade for scraps.

He doesn't know if anything he knew is still standing. He has had no desire to see the ruins for himself but he lets himself imagine it for a second, and contemplates how much easier it would be to find himself if he was somewhere there were pieces of him to find.

“You still have time,” Peeta says distantly, watching the sunset with a woman he understood even less after getting to know her and remembering his favourite colour is not just this shade of orange.

“He has more,” she sighs, plaintive and lost, and Peeta is tempted to tell her it doesn’t matter. Even when you’re a second away from death the world can change on you and leave all your plans for naught.

“That’s not guaranteed,” he says, more to himself than to Julia, but her smile is still a kind of thanks.

\--#--@ @--#--

Peeta wakes in the morning, shaking and sweaty. He is still surprised that he wakes at all: a part of his brain remains convinced that he is in one of the arenas, and today he is going to die. He trained himself into these patterns of thinking in less than a week each time; it is taking an exponentially longer to train himself out of them.

He eschews his morning shower in favour of finding Doctor Verrius, the primary therapist assigned to Julia. He feels uncomfortable with the idea of discussing her without her knowledge, but he thinks it more unfair that she is imprisoned against her will. With her distrust of middle-aged men Peeta wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had been unable to properly articulate that in her individual sessions.

He gets lost more than once, unfamiliar with the area of the hospital Doctor Verrius presides over. He asks for directions from a harried Capitol nurse. She looks him up and down, eyeing his loosely hanging standard issue pyjamas and bare feet. His every day clothes are not much different, but he still feels underdressed. He doesn’t know from the sneer on her face whether she will help him, and it is easier to glare and walk away. Peeta is tired of being a burden.

Doctor Verrius’ office appears almost entirely by accident just when Peeta has decided to stop looking for it. It is fancier than Doctor Aurelius’, with ornate scroll work on the wooden door and careful calligraphy engraving on the nameplate. Peeta is contemplating the dichotomy apparent in the decoration of office doors when he hears a sharp expletive and the world falls out from under him.

He knows those screams, recognises them deep inside as they force him to his knees. He cups his hands over his ears and it blocks a little of the sounds; none of the other things he has seen or heard has been affected by anything so mundane.

It has been too easy for Peeta to believe he might be finally freeing himself from the voices in his head. Nothing is simple, not in here, and the rest of Peeta’s mind joins in his torment, throwing a dozen horrible visions of Katniss trying to kill the people he loves at him. They’ve always gone together, the cartoon strip of memories and the soundtrack of screams created by the girl down the hall.

He remembers her name now: Johanna Mason, his fellow victor. It is her image he sees when the door opens, overlaying Katniss growling. Her hair has grown but her eyes are the same, which helps him force himself to recognise that time has passed and not everything he feels is real.

“What are you doing here?” Doctor Verrius’ voice is raised. Peeta grasps on to the distraction like a lifeline and focuses his attention on whether doctors are allowed to raise their voices to patients, and does it make a difference if they’re not technically in charge of your own treatment?

Doctor Aurelius hushes his colleague. Peeta, determined to add as much data to his experiment as he can, examines the doctor’s face for the faint traces of emotion that occasionally betray him and detects the shame and relief that Peeta had once displayed when caught in the cookie display after bedtime.

Deceit had once been unpleasant for him.

“Good morning, Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius greets him. On the screen in the middle of the room Johanna is surrounded by young, uniformed infirmary workers one of which has just administered the injection that has silenced her screaming. Peeta feels unaccountably sorry for her; he can’t see any reason why she shouldn’t drive them all to distraction with her shrieks.

Perhaps he is being too lenient; he is so pleased that her voice was not in his head that, in this second, he would forgive her anything.

“You knew,” Peeta accuses in way of response. “You knew it was real when I spoke to you, and you let me think I was going crazy.”

Doctor Verrius looks at him with raised eyebrows. Peeta feels an instant dislike for the man and he decides he will not fight it. Despite what he had once thought, not everyone has goodness in them, waiting to be found, and a large amount more have it buried so deeply there is little point in seeking it.

“Crazy- _er_ , then,” Peeta amends, pulling himself to his feet, starting to feel the uncomfortable prickle of embarrassment at having lost control. He knows that over the next few days his brain will go over it repeatedly in his idle moments and twist it until he will be positive that he shamed himself so thoroughly it will be impossible to recover. “And that’s not the point.”

“It’s really none of your business, Mr Mellark,” Doctor Verrius begins smugly.

“Julius, please,” Doctor Aurelius hushes him and Peeta turns his gaze to his own therapist.

“You should have told me,” Peeta prods lightly, his voice low and filled with pain.

“I can't divulge the details of another patient’s treatment, Peeta, you know that,” Doctor Aurelius says and Peeta raises his hand, brushing away the soothing tone as though it were a physical force. For a while Peeta had believed that he could see his contact with others as a brand on his skin, but when he tilts his palm to catch the light his hand is clean. “I would hope that would have brought you some comfort.”

Peeta is cut at the reminder of his many problems. He is a victor, he is not meant to have any problems. This would be an exorbitantly lucrative story if offered to the right people. Doctor Aurelius may not have meant his words as a threat, but angry as he is that the situation has hurt him, Peeta decides to take them as such.

“Well, we should discuss what my cut of the profits will be,” Peeta snarks. He crosses his arms protectively over his chest, glaring at both the doctors in challenge. “Will Effie be doing the reporting, or will you be getting someone more famous for this special feature?”

Doctor Verrius starts to say something that Peeta knows he will take great offence at. He is not sure which of the two of them is meant to be in charge, but when Doctor Aurelius makes another hushing motion, his colleague complies.

“Enough,” Doctor Aurelius insists. It is one of his catchphrases when speaking to Peeta. “I’m willing to discuss this with you rationally, but if you’re planning on acting irrationally, I will assume that you are not ready to talk about it, and send you back to your room. Which one would you prefer?”

Peeta murmurs an apology and Doctor Aurelius accepts it with a wordless nod. On the screen Johanna seems to be dozing, although a tic in her cheek gives Peeta an inkling that it is an act. He wonders whether he will be expected to talk to her and what sort of exchange that will be: _sorry for almost deafening you in our torture cells, shame we didn’t die then, huh, so what are you planning on doing later, trying to finish the job?_

It is a testament to his current circumstances that such a conversation would not be the strangest he has had this week.

The image of a broken victor blinks and dies. There is a small black box in Doctor Aurelius’ hand, one that he tosses carelessly onto Doctor Verrius’ disconcertingly tidy desk. Peeta has never seen a television controlled like this and he is leaning forward in fascination when Doctor Aurelius begins shepherding him out of the room.

They do not speak as they travel the unfamiliar route to Doctor Aurelius’ office. Peeta is glad of it. He is not much in the mood for small talk, and he is not sure that, if he begins, he will be able to stop the stream of vindictive accusations that would prove devastating to his desire of taking meaning from this morning.

Peeta’s chair, the one he likes to sit in a corner when he is in the doctor’s office so that he knows no one can sneak up on him, is flush against the rosewood desk. Peeta moves it back silently and adds another strange thought to his mental file on Doctor Aurelius: the man both remembered and took the time to replicate, where Peeta liked the chair. The doctor likely had a similar note about Peeta, along with a detailed psychological analysis regarding what it meant.

“Now, are you feeling a little better after the walk?” The doctor asks with no trace of sarcasm in his voice. Peeta snorts and promises himself that sometime before he leaves here he will need to catch the doctor practising this lack of emotion and learn his secret.

Peeta’s breath catches in his throat and he grasps in his pocket for his squishy stress ball. He has not considered leaving here before; had not believed it could ever be possible. He has been so long resigned to staying that he has forgotten the lure of freedom and while it does not come back to him as he thinks it should, Peeta is determined that he will nurture an ember of it somewhere inside him, deep enough that it will be safe even from Doctor Aurelius’ probing. He is not, and will never be, safe here.

The doctor himself is watching Peeta carefully and Peeta realises that it is long since his turn to talk. He has to take several deep breaths before he is confident that his ability to speak ‘reasonably’ will not be hampered by how easily he has taught himself to express everything he is feeling, for good or ill.

“You should have told me,” Peeta repeats as reasonably as he can. His voice still wavers and he curls in on himself, tucking his foot tightly around the rung of his chair. “Even if you didn’t tell me about Johanna you could have mentioned that what I was hearing wasn’t just my head making things up.”

“I’d hoped we’d be able to have you come to that realisation on your own,” Doctor Aurelius says unhappily. Peeta raises his eyebrow and considers throwing his stress ball across the room, but he is meant to be beyond that now and it will not bode well for this talk. Doctor Aurelius sighs and Peeta forbids himself to let the little tickle of discomfort in his throat become guilt. “I’d also hoped to consult with Doctor Verrius before I took any further steps.”

Peeta is not sure what he is hoping for. An apology would be pointless, he knows now that he cannot trust it. An explanation would be ideal but he is so twisted about in confusion that he is not certain what he wants an explanation for, nor whether it would make any sense to him.

“I thought...” Peeta cuts himself off. He had thought Doctor Aurelius was his _friend_ and he sees now that is a mistake; he is a puzzle to put back together, not a person to this segment of the Capitol.

“Yes?” Doctor Aurelius pushes and Peeta shakes his head. There are too many thoughts echoing around his brain to articulate any one of them well. He squeezes his ball and counts his breaths. While he feels the tidal wave receding somewhat, he doesn’t know if it will be enough to speak without making himself sound more ridiculous.

He tries another trick, one he has taught himself. He knows Doctor Aurelius does not approve, but that's a bonus now. He picks one of the problems bothering him, one of the smaller, less heart-rending ones, and focuses on it as deeply as he is able. It is difficult, sometimes impossible, trying to block out the rest of his worries but Peeta has always worked best with something to obsess over: a goal, a purpose and an excuse all rolled into one allows him to endure almost any ordeal.

“How did you even hide her from me?” Peeta demands. He knows the institution is large, and contains many wings he has not yet been able to explore yet. With the chaos all around them he also knows that many of the boundaries have fallen and he finds it difficult to believe that he wouldn't have seen or heard the presence of another victor; the gossips around here have a stronger support network than the staff and news is able to travel more freely than truth.

“She’s not here,” Doctor Aurelius says dismissively. It is the voice he uses when he is trying to twist Peeta in another direction without having to say it outright. “We were simply consulting, sharing some of our expertise.”

“You can do that without seeing someone?” Peeta asks, confused. He has seen so many new patients admitted that did not want to be here. _Julia_ would prefer to be home. If it's as easy as that, why is this place so crowded?

“In special cases,” Doctor Aurelius says and Peeta raises his eyebrows. He has heard far too much in his lifetime about ‘special cases’. Somehow they only ever exist in times that other people, far more deserving, are getting completely screwed.

“And what constitutes a special case?” Peeta asks, icily polite. He thinks of Julia’s fragility and the way her husband can still control her life, and of how entitled Doctor Aurelius seems to feel about his right to control the lives of everyone in his little dominion.

“It’s not relevant,” Doctor Aurelius waves his question away and Peeta settles himself further into his chair, a stubborn frown twisting itself over his mouth. If he weren’t so angry he would entertain himself with attempting to question the differences between that and all his other frowns.

“It’s relevant to me,” Peeta snaps, meeting the doctor’s unimpressed gaze with the full force of his own. He can see the man waver and the pleasure he feels in it is the same twisted one that let him smash his only connection to the outside world and not regret it at all.

“Johanna is safe where she is, and she has adequate supervision,” Doctor Aurelius explains after a pause Peeta knows is meant to break him down again. Peeta is tired of being broken. “They will do well enough as they are, with what help we can give them.”

Peeta considers this explanation and finds it lacking. While the doctor is not actively malicious but he is confident, occasionally straying over the edge of arrogant. It is unlikely he would ever believe that another could do his job quite so well. Especially when, and Peeta shudders as he forces himself to remember each bit of the small glimpses he had seen of Johanna, it seems that she remains in the bleak surrounds of District 13’s infirmary.

“And?” He asks flatly, arms so tightly crossed together they could almost be mistaken for an embrace.

“There would be...difficulties in transporting her here,” Doctor Aurelius admits with a glint in his eye that makes Peeta believe the situation has been explored in great detail.

“So why can’t everyone else leave and find adequate supervision elsewhere?” Peeta mimics. Julia is used to Capitol luxury, yes, but he knows better than most that anything can be adapted to, in time.

“I didn’t think you’d had any desire to leave,” Doctor Aurelius says. He sounds almost smug and Peeta squeezes so tightly on his stress ball that one of the seams pops, spilling small pieces of foam all over the floor. Peeta makes a face of disgust and drops it, brushing the sticky white cylinders off his fingers.

“I don’t want to stay here the rest of my life,” Peeta protests. He would have said ‘plan to’, but he has so little control over his future at this juncture that he his surprised he's allowed to decide when he uses the toilet.

“And yet you’ve also expressed no interest in returning home,” Doctor Aurelius finishes with the relish of a man who has been wanting to deliver that line through hours of failed openings.

“I don’t have to go back there,” Peeta argues, although his mind blanks on where exactly he would go. His distaste for the Capitol ensures he will never be happy living here and he is aware enough to realise that any usefulness he had for District 13 died when he failed to kill their Mockingjay after they set him on her trail.

Surely, somewhere in the ruins of this failed country there is another place he could consider home; it's naive to believe there is only one place for each person. Thought Doctor Aurelius clearly does and he will have no chance of doing anything if the doctor does not think it is _best_ for him.

“There’s nothing there,” Peeta says, looking down at his lap. In some of his nightmares he is there, on one of the Capitol hovercrafts, dropping the bomb on his home. He is the one who sits at the controls, brushing his finger over the small black button, indistinguishable from all the rest, as he decides whether or not to unleash destruction on thousands of innocent people. Just as he makes his decision he sees the face of a cheerful young man before him, blue eyes wide and trusting. His brother Symon looks up at him with a smile as Peeta pushes the button in with his thumb and sets the world as he knows it on fire.

“Some people think so,” Doctor Aurelius says mildly as Peeta doubles over, breathing wildly and trying to think of anything but how he felt when he heard that Symon and Johnn would not be waiting for him if he were ever allowed to go home. “Others believe differently. I’ve heard many are returning to District 12 to make it strong again.”

Peeta hadn’t been aware that there is anything left to make strong.

“I’m not interested,” he mutters. He remembers how the moon would shine outside the bakery early each morning, streaking the Merchant's area with silvery light and giving him a reason to pull himself out of bed. He slants a glance at Doctor Aurelius’ practised calm and the way amusement dances around the corners of his mouth. He tries, painfully, not to give in to the pressure of the questions pushing at him, and when he speaks again his voice subdued. “Just pretending...if I was, what would I have to do?”

“Get better,” Doctor Aurelius says simply, as though it were _easy_ , as though Peeta hadn’t been giving _everything_ to try and do so.

“I am,” Peeta yells, and he feels tears prickling behind his eyes. He wipes them away with the back of his arm and ignores them, pretending they did not exist. He will convince himself, one day. “You _know_ that! I don’t...”

He wants to say that he no longer gets lost in his false memories, because he does. On his bad days, he can collapse two, three times before he begs for the Morphling that only sometimes comes. He still gets angry and wants to hurt something although, the one thing he can say in his defence, he can now manage not to.

“I can tell now,” he says lamely. He can't understand why something that had felt so vitally important when he had first accomplished it can now seem so woefully inadequate. He can't stop the memories from terrorising him or causing him skull-crushing agony. What he can do, almost all the time and with no small amount of satisfaction, is know they are lies. “I can tell now! I can tell the difference, between my memories and theirs. You said that’s what you’d teach me to do.”

“It’s a place to start,” Doctor Aurelius says and his eyes are filled with the fires that fuel him when he is set upon some course of action that he is positive will make Peeta into the person he has decided he will be.

“It was what we agreed,” Peeta insists, although the sinking sense in his stomach that tries to convince him that is not how the conversation went. “You said you’d help the Capitol stop controlling me. Well, I know now. I know when the memories aren’t mine...”

He trails off because Doctor Aurelius is shaking his head. It is a sign, a clear one, that he will not get his way. He feels dizzy and he has to place both of his hands over his eyes to try and stem the tide of confusion.

“Your memories are not everything you are, Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius says. The voice that he had let soothe him once grates in his ears. In absence of his toy Peeta pulls his hands from his head and flexes them, pulling comfort from the crack of his bones. “You were more than that.”

“Like what?” Peeta challenges, because he cannot see what has the doctor so enchanted. He was a weak puppy, grovelling at his master’s feet for any scraps she would give him and starving in between.

“Kind. Compassionate. Strong.” Doctor Aurelius ticks off his fingers. Peeta snorts because the man has listed two of the things that made him weak and one that is patently untrue. “Stronger than you realise, I think. Charismatic. Creative.”

“They’re hardly unique quantities,” Peeta says sullenly. He counted it a triumph that he is no longer the pathetic boy the Capitol was able to subdue so easily. “Bet you can throw a sweet out that door and have ten people who fit that description try and wrestle it out of each other’s hands.”

“Most importantly,” Doctor Aurelius continues without acknowledging Peeta’s words. “You were a complete person, Peeta. _Your own_ person. Effortlessly.”

“So that’s what I’d need to do to get out of there?” Peeta asks. He doesn’t know why he has fixated on this idea of getting out, but now that he has he can’t let it go.

“It will never be effortless again,” the doctor says and Peeta can almost be convinced he sounds sad; if he hadn’t been deceived so completely he might have taken that easy route. “But yes, I’d like to see you well on the path to being the young man you were before.”

There is a reverence in the doctor’s voice that makes Peeta feel slightly ill. He rubs his stomach absently and considers simply trying to walk out, breaking down any barriers in his way; surely his future can’t be decided by a man with a crush on a celebrity he had never really known.

“Fine,” Peeta says. He can feel the flames of Portia’s cloak burning around his face. He embraces the fire, lets it fuel him and burn away the complacency he has allowed himself to become lost in. He had lied in front of an entire country; they believed him enough to break that country in two. He can convince this one man. “Then that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

The tightening of Doctor Aurelius’ forehead tells Peeta he doesn’t believe him. It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t need to.

Not yet.

\--#--@ @--#--

-

“That’s the third time in a row you’ve come back looking angry,” Julia tells him, teasing in her voice. Peeta grins through his frustration against every instinct; she so rarely has the confidence to take these liberties with anyone that he likes to encourage it when he can.

“You look happier,” he counters. He can tell when she has not been forced to talk in her group sessions. He can see the sparkle of the woman she might have been and he retreats into one of the private fantasies he occasionally nurtures on what he’d do if he ever met her husband.

Peeta drops himself onto his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. It is hard, painful, and he wriggles his back against it, using the pain to anchor him. He no longer has the respite of his own group sessions; Doctor Aurelius, inspired by Peeta’s own determination, has taken over Peeta’s treatment entirely. Peeta has always known that he is not strong, but these twice daily appointments are draining him to exhaustion.

Doctor Aurelius must have a hint of sadism hidden somewhere beneath that polished facade to be able to continue it; with so many other patients, Peeta would be fascinated to find out how he has time.

“Do you want to talk about it?”  Julia asks him. She is safely across the room, pressed against the farthest wall. He can smell fear now, he is convinced of it, a trick of the Capitol to make Katniss easier to track. The small room reeks of it, the sharp tang of sweat and stale water. He wants to tell her that he is not what she needs to be afraid of, but he can’t say that with conviction anymore.

“No,” Peeta says. He grips his hands into his sheets, twisting the threadbare fabric through his fingers. His hands are too smooth, lacking the callouses made permanent through a lifetime of small bakery burns. He used to be ashamed at how rough they were; now he wonders whether it would be easier to plunge his hands into the staff fireplace to remake a part of himself in the image of who he used to be, as if it would be easier to become that boy again if they looked alike.

Then again, needing to sew his leg back on might make that plan impossible. The leg, of course, being why that plan was garbage.

“Step four. Reaching out. Making connections. Forging friendships.” Peeta recites from the list of steps they are meant to take towards their recovery. The doctors continue to insist that becoming well again is a great deal more difficult than a checklist, but they continue to parrot on about how very important it is to follow them anyway.

They have helped him in a way. Peeta has embraced hatred of hypocrisy as the first trait of his former self that he will integrate into his present.

“I’m sorry,” Julia whispers. Peeta contemplates ignoring her, leaving her alone with her own heartbreaks, but that little part inside him protests and away from the supervision of his doctors and the curious eyes of the people who broke him, Peeta listens.

“It’s not your fault,” Peeta says. It is a struggle to sound gentle. “Doctor Aurelius just wanted to talk about...her.”

He has taught himself to think her name in the privacy of his own head where the only person who can hurt him is himself. He has not made the same progress out loud. Every time he says it, _Katniss_ , it sounds like a hiss, a battle cry. The mutt inside him struggles to give into it, to follow the path of the screams until he comes across her mangled, broken body.

“She’s so beautiful,” Julia whispers. Peeta looks at her in disbelief. That reverence could have come out of his own mouth six months ago. His lip curls when he thinks about about how sickening he must have sounded. “She is so strong.”

“She’s a survivor,” Peeta repeats what he said to Doctor Aurelius months ago. He has been through more hours of therapy than he can count. Still that is the only thing he can say about her.

“You really don’t love her any more?” Julia asks.

“I really don’t,” Peeta agrees. It feels right to say. Honest in a way that he hasn’t been in a very long time. He has wondered whether he ever really did, but he finds that is disingenuous. He must have loved her once; it is the only thing that makes his actions over the two years since their first reaping make sense.

“And is it true? What they...what they did?” Peeta is startled by the use of the word _they_ rather than _we_. He harbours no ill will for Julia, or for most of the people here, but when he thinks of the people who did this to him he thinks of everyone from the Capitol with all their wilful blindness.

“Yeah,” Peeta says, counting the divots on the ceiling and imagining they are stars. It has been so long since he has been able to lie out in the crisp evening air and count them all, dreaming of better worlds. He doesn’t know if he’ll have the chance to see them again. If he does they’ll be different. With the world so completely changed he can’t fathom the sky staying the same, especially when he considers that the only people left with the time to chart them are the dead. “It’s true.”

Julia whimpers, a little sob, and Peeta is uncharitably convinced that whatever she’s been through it is nothing to what he, or Johanna or Haymitch or even Katniss have suffered. He expressed that thought to Doctor Aurelius in one of their sessions. His therapist brought up a point that Peeta has not yet been able to refute: can you catalogue pain? Can one pain be considered superior to another? Peeta was prepared to insist that yes, his ranked right up there with the worst, but one of his memories made him consider.

He had thought each second he was locked up as the Capitol’s plaything the worst pain he had ever experienced, until they executed the next of their experiments on him. Perhaps for Julia this is the worst pain possible because she had no greater torment to compare it to. He doesn’t hate her enough to give her a demonstration.

“How did you survive it?” She asks hoarsely and he can hear the roughness of tears in her throat.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Peeta says, worrying at a small hole in his sheet. In a way the putting back together of his broken body was as bad as the destruction of it; he fought just as hard to stop it. “So many people insisted that I did that by the time they left me alone I’d already done it.”

He is still bitter about this, particularly when he thinks of how much of this struggle he could have saved himself if they had let him die, there in the Capitol square, watching the world explode him. More than once he had the container of his medicine in the palm of his hand, calculating how many doses he will need to hoard to stop the frantically erratic beating of his heart that started when he heard the words _I volunteer_.

“Does it bother you? When you see her on TV?” Peeta is glad Julia is sensitive enough not to use Katniss’ name in front of him. She is kind, in the same way he strives to appear again. He could take lessons from her.

“I try to avoid it,” Peeta admits. He has seen Katniss act before, and when it comes to keeping herself alive, she has a prodigious talent. Peeta has better things to do with his time than examine each frame of her appearances, analysing which few, precious seconds might be real.

He turns over in his bed and sees Julia frowning at him. Peeta sighs. He may as well be back in Doctor Aurelius’ office for all the feelings he is being made to confess.

“No, it doesn’t really bother me, on the few occasions I bother to watch.” Peeta amends. Julia nods and he can see the gears inside her head ticking, processing his words. He likes it when she is occupied. It makes the room stink less of fear, letting the cocktail of antiseptic and apathy circle around instead.

“Did you ever love her?” Julia asks. Peeta hesitates before he answers; she sounds so apprehensive. He worries that the wrong answer will cause more damage he cannot fix.

“I think so,” he says, choosing honesty. He is too tired to think of a lie, knowing that he will need to remember and perpetuate it each time he was confronted with these questions. He is so tired of talking about Katniss. No matter what answer he gives it is the wrong one: each person he talks to has a different perception of what his relationship with Katniss was, and each of them is determined that they are the one who can rebuild it in that ideal. Even the many voices in his head are not numerous enough to reflect back each one. “I just don’t now. And I’m sick of everyone telling me I have to.”

He means that not as a censure, but as a warning. They have gotten along well enough so far by deliberately ignoring each other’s triggers. He doesn’t want to spend however much time he has left with a deluded fan who thought the best way to support their relationship was to put their money towards weapons that would help them kill each other.

He should be pleased to be surprised, but up until now the ratio of good to bad have been so skewed that whenever something good happens he is convinced that an arrow he can’t see will pierce him through a vital organ.

“You don’t have to,” Julia says. It is such a simple truth that it renders Peeta speechless. Julia’s clothes rustle as she turns towards him. She sees him gape and her lips twitch at the corners: a smile, Peeta realises. “I’ve never seen it end well. Loving someone just because everyone thinks you’re meant to.”

“Did you ever love your husband?” Peeta asks, so distracted by the thought she offers him that he speaks before he thinks. “Wait, I’m sorry. Don’t answer that. I do have to love her. It’s part of me putting myself together.”

Those words have never been said to him, but he hears them everywhere, echoing between all the promises they make him and all the things he is made to guarantee in return.

“Doctor Verrius told me that ourselves, our real selves, are like quilts,” Julia says and Peeta wonders how Doctor Verrius covers the fact that he is a very great idiot.

“Fraying and made from ratty scraps?” Peeta asks. He had one, as did most people in District 12. It was the only way to keep warm when the worst of winter came. No one could afford anything better, not even Madge Undersee and her wealthy family. The Capitol would have had something better, of course, but that could be said of anything but people.

“Something like that,” Julia agrees. She tucks her legs under her like a school child, squirming around until she looks uncomfortable. Peeta knows it must be hurting her. His bed is still digging painfully into his back; it is something he sympathises with. “He says we’re all like quilts, made from the patches of our memories, and our pasts.”

It sounds like more of the ridiculous babble that the doctors spout when they have no real answers.

“Where do the pillows fit in?” Peeta muses. Julia stifles a snort and he takes that as encouragement to continue with his lame attempts at humour. “Would it make a difference if you had a sleeping bag instead?”

“Hush,” Julia tells him. “The point is, they fray and break, like we do sometimes. And like us, when that happens you lose things. You can sew it back together in places, but you’ll still have lost some of the pieces. You’ll end up with a quilt, but it’ll be smaller, and missing patches.”

Peeta considers what she is trying to tell him. His thoughts are almost like her metaphor, patchy and not making much sense.

“I don’t get it, Julia, I’m sorry,” Peeta says. He tries to shrug his shoulders. He is stymied by the hard pillow bunched around his neck. Julia ducks her head and Peeta takes the opportunity to study her more carefully than he has since their first night together in this room. She has gained weight. Her cheekbones no longer create hollows on her face and the lines of tension on her forehead have filled in a little.

“I’m just saying that it’s hard, finding enough of yourself to put back together,” Julia says, fiddling with her hair. “It makes sense that you’ll be missing pieces. And it’s all right if one of them is her.”

Peeta opens his mouth but no words come out. He manages a strangled yelp that that seems entirely out of proportion to a twisted image. He flexes his hands in the shape of a small ball, squeezing them like his piece of rubber were still in his fingers. The repetition brings him some clarity, although his brain is so crowded with a thousand thoughts at once and it will be a while before he is able to find any peace.

“You’re the first person who’s said that,” Peeta says quietly. He has been fighting so hard to see a future without Katniss in it that he never stopped to believe that it would be all right.

“It’s this place,” Julia says, picking at her fingernails. They are short, Peeta sees, and ragged from the many times she has done it before. “It twists things. They’re so determined to make you like them that you forget you don’t have be anyone but yourself.”

“What if who I was is different to who I am now?” Peeta asks rhetorically. All the professionals have failed to give him an answer he can accept, it is doubtful that his frail roommate can.

“I don’t know,” Julia says exactly as Peeta expected. “I wish we could just pick the parts we like.”

“I wish we could, too,” Peeta agrees, turning over again. The wall in front of him has faint scratches, one for each day he has been there. He uses his nail to make another for today in case he forgets later. There are three long lines, even and complete, and Peeta is nearly halfway through the fourth.

If he could choose to be anyone, it would be the opposite of who he had once been: strong and unbreakable. Perceptive, smart enough not to be fooled by a bright smile and years worth of daydreams. Most importantly he would get rid of the quiet voice, once almost silent, but getting stronger every day. The one that complains when he is tense, yells when he is cruel and screams, as loudly as his nightmares, whenever he is deliberately hurtful.

“I’d stop caring as much,” Peeta mutters. About himself, about every damn thing he can’t change.

“Then you’d be as bad as them,” Julia says, saying the word _them_ as a curse. She has a point, he knows this, but kindness, and empathy, are the things he can't reconcile with making it through the way he has been hurt.

“It’d hurt less,” Peeta says, scrunching his eyes closed. He imagines the wall he has been constructing around himself is a tangible force, built of solid, non-shining bricks. Wherever he doesn’t look it starts to crumble and he has to spin around until he is dizzy, trying to stack the stones back on top of each other.

“Would it be real?” Julia asks, breaking him out of his fantasy. Peeta curls his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his knees. He buries his head on top of them and bites his lip until his moan is forced back. He imagines the wall again and holds it strong, holding as tightly to it as he does to the belief that as long as the wall stands, so will his resolve.

\--#--@ @--#--

Jasmine and Serena, it turns out, are not just the best of friends, they are secretly in love, a fact they’ve now confessed, to the joy of all, Peeta excluded. Peeta finds the drudge of daytime television and the ridiculous stories they invent intolerable. He hears genuine joy in the exclamations of the patients who share the 1-2 PM television slot this week.

It is a sign of how far he has come: only the patients most in favour with their doctors are allowed this time. People have been known to trade their daily medications to be allowed once a week. If Peeta could remember who they were he’d gladly give his time away in exchange for nothing but the sanity he would regain.

When the nurse appears, one of the ones who greatly dislikes him, and turns her frowning face in his direction, Peeta is almost relieved. He has not replaced his stress ball yet, and he makes another note, far too late, to do so. Surprises happen regularly here, and Peeta is not used to any of them.

Surprises don’t mean birthday parties or the chance meeting of a new friend. They are a new face, smiling placidly above him as a button somewhere in the background is pressed and Peeta’s back arches off the cold metal table as all his nerves are burning in agony. They are a timid looking young woman who holds a small needle and injects trackerjacker venom into his veins and talks sweetly about all the horrible things that will happen to him while Peeta’s vision distorts into images of the people he loved breaking into pieces while animals eat their remains.

They are the knowledge that he has only been rescued so that the Mockingjay doesn’t look heartless and finding that he’s glad that he has another reason to tuck a small piece of hatred into his heart.

“Get up,” the nurse instructs him, barely polite. “You’ve got a phone call.”

“No,” Peeta says, deliberately turning his attention back to the hideous display of sentimentality on the smaller, not quite so fancy screen.

“What do you mean, no?” She asks, sounding so baffled that someone has the audacity to say no that all traces of anger have been leeched from her voice. “You have to come with me.”

“No, I don’t,” Peeta says clearly. He is monitoring the rest of his peers out of the corner of his eyes; so many of them look frightened, disturbed in some way by watching Peeta stand up for himself. He has disliked this woman since their first encounter. He had assumed that was another symptom of his condition. It occurs to him now that it may simply be because the bitch isn’t likeable. “I don’t have to go anywhere with you.”

The nurse’s face goes red and in her eyes he can see the long list of things she wants to tell him. He should tell her that it doesn’t matter, he knows them already. There is nothing she could say to him that he hasn’t already thought about himself. Though that might be comforting to her, and Peeta isn’t particularly interested in making her feel better.

“Get up and come with me,” she repeats with a snarl that is like Peeta has always imagined a wolf would sound like.

She is not an unattractive woman but before his eyes she transforms, her eyes glittering deep and velvety brown. He can’t remember what Rue the little girl looked like anymore. He remembers the wolf-mutt with her eyes, coming to end what little of his life he had left. In Peeta’s mind they merge, the young tribute and the small-minded nurse, and he is backing away, arms raised protectively over his face. He sees the small smile of triumph on her face only because he is looking for it and the smell of hatred that makes his heart contract and his muscles clench wipes away the icy fear.

His head begins to pound, a rhythmic beat in his temples that sounds like drums. The edges of his vision begin to close in, glowing queerly, and the voice in his head begins to hiss: Katniss, _Katniss_.

Peeta takes a step forward, closer to the wolf-mutt. Its eyes widen, fear and anger warring for dominance, and he smiles. The game is no fun if he’s the only one interested in playing. His arms lower, exposing his face and neck. He tilts his head, examining his surroundings, counting at least seven things in his line of sight that he can use as a weapon. He chooses one at random and moves towards it, watching carefully to ensure that the mutt won’t be on him until he is ready to attack.

“ _Peeta_.”

Peeta doesn’t know who says his name, perhaps will never know. Lost as he is in his preparations the two familiar syllables capture enough of his attention that he is able to turn his head and examine the crowd gathering in the doorway. It parts as he stares and Doctor Aurelius, looking apprehensive, strides through the newly created space.

“Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius says with some relief. “Why don’t you come to my office?”

“He has a phone call,” the nurse insists. He still sees a mutt when he looks at her, but through rapid blinking, a critical examination of an intensity he prefers to reserve for his painting, and a sheer determinations, he is able to make her face transform, morphing slowly back into an unlikeable woman.

“I don’t have a phone call,” Peeta offers, shrugging his shoulders and forcing his mouth into a dark simulation of a smile. “There’s no one left who cares enough to call me.”

He doesn’t look at either of the combatants for his attention. He doesn’t want to see her dark satisfaction  or his condescending sympathy. Instead he examines the carpet, threadbare and stained, and wonders how a Capitol that enjoys displaying decadent wealth at every turn can abandon so many of its own to relative poverty.

“Surprise,” the nurse says so quietly that Peeta has to look to Doctor Aurelius for confirmation that he is not imagining things. The doctor’s expression doesn’t change. Peeta clenches his eyes closed, practising one of the breathing exercises he has been taught: slowly in through the nose and out through the mouth.

He digs his nails into his palm until they draw blood. It is hot, wet and alternates between a sharp pain when he pushes against them and a dull, continuous ache when he lets go. He relaxes at the distraction and clenches his fists again, focusing all his attention on each sharp sting. It is centering, being able to think about this one moment of pain and knowing that he is in control of it, that no one else is inflicting it on him.

“He has to take it,” the nurse insists. Her lip is curled, revealing teeth so perfect they can only have come from the Capitol. “It’s _them_.”

The only time has had heard the word _them_ said with such distaste is when someone in the districts was talking about people like her; he can't imagine what could cause that type of loathing in one of their spoiled citizens.

“Peeta is not up to-” Doctor Aurelius starts loudly.

“Peeta can say what Peeta is up to,” Peeta cuts him off with a wave of his cut hand. Doctor Aurelius looks pointedly at the crescent-shaped wounds silently and Peeta tucks it back under his elbow. He is not ashamed of the ways he has found to cope, but that does not extend to being prepared to be judged for it.

She turns and leaves. Peeta, curious and contrary and so very sick of having to obey Doctor Aurelius in everything, follows. He keeps his eyes on her heels in their closed and narrow shoes. They are so human that he is able to remember that she is a person, albeit a Capitol one, not one of their custom designed terrors.

It turns out the bank of telephones are not far from his room. Peeta has seen them a hundred times on his way to the bathroom or to one of his pitiful attempts at making music in one of the alternative therapy courses. Each is located in its own little soundproof booth and Peeta steps into the one the nurse is pointing at.

She stares at him until he closes the thin door. He must be bigger than their average patient, because he is squashed in, pressing against each side and wedged against the telephone itself. He feels better, being this tightly surrounded. There is a feeling of safety, knowing that there is nowhere that a mutt can hide.

A bit of the telephone is separated from the rest and he picks it up, examining it hesitantly. He has been in possession of one before, in the few months he lived in the Victor’s Village. He never used it; there was never anyone to call bar Katniss and Haymitch and it was far easier to walk out his front door and go knock on theirs.

He raises it to his ear, moving it back and forth. He thinks he can hear breathing through it, but that might be his own, echoing around his small cubicle.

“Hello?” He says loudly, feeling as ridiculous as he does when he realises that he has been talking to himself again. “Is there anyone there?”

“Peeta Mellark?” The accent that comes through the receiver is strange, barely familiar. Someone from District 13, so clear that Peeta takes a long look around him to ensure that it is not someone whispering through the door.

“Yes,” he agrees when it occurs to him that they can’t see him nodding his head without a camera.

“Rebecka Rowan speaking,” she says briskly. Peeta leans back against the side wall of his tiny room, switching the receiver from his left ear to his right. “Perhaps you remember me?”

“No,” Peeta says. He doesn’t bother to wrack his memory to put a name to the face; he knew perhaps three or four people from Distric 13, and Katniss put an arrow through one of them. Everyone else was a blur of faces and angry words, poking and prodding at the scraps of the pieces that were left of him.

“We met in the infirmary, just before you left,” Rebecka reminds him and Peeta rolls his eyes. He passed through the hands of dozens of people before he was sent on his quest to eradicate President Coin’s latest enemy, and the only one he remembers is little Primrose Everdeen, who insisted on giving him a piece of her mind, and a threat, before he left.

“I don’t remember,” Peeta repeated impatiently. “Unless your name is Katniss and I was actively trying to kill you, I didn’t really have time to play match with names and faces.”

There is silence on the other end of the telephone.

“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” Rebecka says and Peeta’s head began to pound. He makes the list in his head: it is better to be in a Capitol torture room than it is to see Katniss Everdeen again. Real or not real?

There are many points in his life that he would have given different answers. Today he tells himself to experience one memory: a Capitol man smiling as he injected Peeta with a strange fluid that set every cell in his body alight with pain. It takes him less than a second, but he lets himself feel it again: the agony of the injection and the memory that had only then become painful. They had not been alone in that cave in the Arena, not really, but before the man’s twisted smile, he had believed that at least that one kiss was real.

“No,” he says, his voice steady while the rest of him quakes. He watches his hand, the one not gripping tightly to the telephone. It trembles, shaking like someone is holding onto it and playing for their own amusement. He clenches it in and out of a fist, but that makes the quivers travel all the way up his arm: it is easier to press his whole limb against the glass wall of his little cage and force all uncontrolled movement to stop.

“No?” Rebecka asks.

“No, I haven’t seen her. No, I don’t know where she is. No, we are no longer engaged. No, I don’t care. Does that cover it all?” Peeta has rehearsed this answer for each of the lovestruck patients who have approached him with adoration in their eyes and offensive questions on their lips.

“That’s not what I meant,” Rebecka says after a silence that does nothing to help Peeta collect his thoughts. “We’re having trouble contacting her, you see...”

“I don’t know how to either,” Peeta interrupts. He tilts his face up and sees a hundred numbers written there, scattered around with no discernible pattern. He tries to make sense of them, adding them together until he loses track somewhere in the hundreds; the children of District 12 didn’t have much use for anything bigger than that, they were told.

“I understand that, yes,” Rebecka says.

“Then what do you want?” Peeta asks plainly. His ear is starting to hurt from holding the telephone against it. He is starting to gain control of his trembling limbs, but the novelty of his phone call has worn off and he thinks even Jasmine and Serena will be preferable to whatever it is that he will learn here.

“Trying to put this country back together is difficult, Peeta,” Rebecka tells him in the scolding tone his mother used to use when she was telling him off for something, right before her fist would start its path towards his face. “There is opposition from everywhere, even places we thought would be allies.”

Peeta makes a wordless gurgle of outrage. His recent lesson not to trust the concept of an ally is newer than his distrust of his mother, but this woman with his mother’s voice and Katniss’ word is pushing buttons that Peeta didn’t realise he had. He turns his gaze as far as he can while still holding onto the receiver and tries to puzzle out how he would terminate a phone call. Is there a word he must use, or is it a new type of movement?

“That has nothing to do with me,” Peeta says instead, running his free hand over the straight line of the receiver, looking for an obvious way out.

“Yes, it does,” Rebecka tells him with equal frankness. “We need the Mockingjay. To help convince people. To help inspire them! And if we can’t get her then we need you.”

Peeta holds the phone away from his ear, suspecting he has imagined the whole conversation. The receiver seems real and solid in his hand, but her statement seems so much like what his head used to tell him, that he and Katniss are interchangeable, that he only exists as her darker shadow.  Maybe this was another conversation he was imagining.

“Peeta, are you there?” Rebecka’s voice comes through the receiver, faint and tinny.

“Uh, yeah,” Peeta says, reaching for the vague memory of some kind of eloquence. “Look, I don’t think...”

He looks up for the first time, staring helplessly out the door. Doctor Aurelius is there, he sees, leaning against the door of the room that holds the phone cubicles. Peeta pushes open his own door and holds the receiver out while the female voice becomes harsher.

“I can’t,” he whispers, promising that he will take back all the terrible things he has thought about his therapist since he started treatment if the man will save him now. “I can’t tell...”

Doctor Aurelius walks forward and points towards a cradle he hadn’t noticed, in the shape of the phone in his hands.

“Just hang up,” Doctor Aurelius advises quietly. Peeta can hear the woman going on, words like _hurting_ , _destruction_ and _guidance_ catching his attention. He thinks of the desperation he had seen on the faces of the refugees when he was in the Capitol and the growing death tolls that are being reported on the news as they slowly started receiving figures from the districts, and counting the people they have left. He thinks, too, of all the times he threw bags of flour back in the bakery in District 12, desperate to do something that would make things better, and of being told that he might have that chance now. “It’s all right.”

Peeta keeps his eyes fixed to Doctor Aurelius’ concerned brown ones as he slowly placed the receiver back in its cradle. Hands now free he sinks to his knees, bends forward until his head is touching the ground, crosses his arms over the top of his head and begins to cry.

\--#--@ @--#--

In front of Peeta is the Mockingjay, tall and proud. She is dressed in the uniform that Portia’s partner Cinna created for her although it is torn open at the chest by the claws that open, unsheathed, from her extended right hand. The blood that oozes out of it is thick and golden, like tracker-jacker venom and her eyes, when he can get up the courage to meet them, are blue.

“It’s beautiful,” Julia says, touching her fingers to a wavy tendril of Katniss’ dark hair. The paint is not completely dry yet and it smudges on her fingers. She snatches her hand away and begins her litany of apologies. Peeta looks at her calmly, steadily and she slowly trails off. When he makes no move to scold or hit her she relaxes a little, and finally summons the courage to smile. Peeta smiles back.

“It was in my nightmare last night,” Peeta says, using his own fingers to smudge the painting a little more. The hair begins to blend into the rising smoke until the girl in it stops being surrounded by the fire and becomes a part of it, born from it. This is the first time it has become so obvious to Peeta, how very young the girl in the picture is, and how frightened she looks of her own power.

She has his hands, too. They are large and incongruous on her small frame.

Peeta tries not to analyse his work too much. There is a special therapist, a part-time Capitol one, who presides over the art room. She has many theories about Peeta’s work and the meaning she insists is hidden within it. On the days he dares to come here she will not let him leave until he has made up some ridiculous metaphors or hidden symbols or some other junk that Peeta tends to invent on the spot. She has loaned him some books that help these stories; he reads them under his covers before he goes to sleep, devouring everything he can about technique and style.

Today she has been distracted by Jonas who, in the middle of one of his fits, has painted demons and corpses all over the back wall.

“I didn’t hear you wake up,” Julia says quietly. He used to have silent nightmares, he is sure of it, but since his second Games they have become loud, screaming affairs that have been known to wake half the wing he is housed in. Julia fares the worst of it. She is such a light sleeper that she is alerted as soon as his breathing becomes heavy. It can be good news for everyone else; since they decided they were friends Julia has occasionally found the strength to wake him up from the worst of them. He prefers those nights to the ones he wakes into hearing her whimpering and crying in her bed. “You didn’t use the pills again, did you?”

There is a specific medication that the doctors like to prescribe to help the patients sleep. They keep Peeta silent, and powerless. He can't scream and he can't move. He is trapped in an ever-changing dreamscape of snarling mutts and glowing Mockingjays that tear him apart, a little at a time, until every small bit of him has become a part of them, complete and unbreakable.

Peeta didn’t sleep for three days after the first time he swallowed one of those tiny white tablets.

“No, I didn’t take anything,” Peeta says, wracking his brain for his routine yesterday. He has been on and off so many different medication regimes that he can’t remember most of them now. Yesterday he had vitamins and a large, green capsule that made him feel so drowsy he threw the rest down the toilet as the water swirled away and added it to his very long list of things he will never do again.

He stares at the painting with his brush, clean of all colours, held high. It is missing something, a small detail somewhere that will change everything, take it from the monstrous wrongness in front of him to a vision that _fits_ , feels right in Peeta’s head. The more he stares the worse it becomes, and it is easier to drop his brush, splattering the mess of pain on his tray than risk dipping it in black and drawing the darkness he sees everywhere all over her face.

“My purple isn’t right,” Julia says. She has turned back to her own work, her lips pursed. Peeta takes a look at it over he shoulder. He knows the house she has created almost as well as the faint memories he has of his own. It is tall, with four distinct levels, and thin. It is painted a pale sage green that Julia makes faces at, with soft lavender trimming. Behind each of the plentiful windows there is a smiling child or a different set of furniture. On the top level, where the master bedroom would be depicted, there is a large, black hole, made of thick, cross-hatched brush strokes. No one is allowed to talk about that room.

“What sort of purple is it?” Peeta asks, holding up the ruined remains of the cheap paint he has been allocated. He has no purple, but he has small amounts of red and blue and a large glob of white. He should be able to make something close.

“It’s the colour like sunrise,” Julia says dreamily, twirling her brush between stiff fingers. She softens when she talks about her home and Peeta is still struggling to understand; he has so few fond memories of his own left. “The daytime blue is at the bottom and there’s still pink right at the top. The purple just under that, where it is not quite day.”

Peeta closes his eyes briefly and tries to call it to mind. He was mostly in the bakery, making the day’s bread when those colours streaked the sky. It was sunset he loved, when his work was done for the day and he had a few rare minutes for himself. He can remember the odd one or two sunrises, from reaping days and the Arena, and it is these memories he calls to mind when he slowly mixes his colours until he has the closest purple he can manage.

“It’s perfect,” Julia says reverently, dipping her index finger in it and tracing a small heart on the back of her other hand. Peeta swallows, blinking rapidly. He raises his own hand, covered in the same colour paint, to his cheek and traces over the flowers that have been sitting there, hidden, since the Morphling addict scarred him with them as she died.

“You put it on,” Julia says and Peeta is distracted from his plan to curve the daisies onto his painted skin, covering the image with the blood it was bought with.

He retrieves his brush from the floor and washes it carefully. He dips it in the depleted lavender and traces her windows carefully, then the doors and the roof. When he is sure they are square and even he adds a touch of grey to the remainder and makes the shadows, the dark edges that add complexity, small hiding places and just a small hint of beauty.

“Why do you miss something that hurts you so much?” Peeta asks while she is entranced, smiling happily at the details Peeta has added. “When it has all those bad memories?”

“There’s so much more to it than that,” Julia whispers. Her fingertips ghost over the surface of her painting so softly that it doesn’t smudge at all, the lines remaining pristine.

“Like what?” Peeta begs, desperate to understand how you can teach yourself to want something that you know will wound you so badly.

“Good memories,” Julia says with a smile that holds as much mystery as it does shy joy.

“How can that be enough?” Peeta scrutinises her face carefully. He is so used to seeing fear on her face that he distrusts the soft tenderness that can make even the timid Julia alight with her own flickering embers that have the potential to burst into flames that are as bright as the ones that engulfed all of Panem.

“When I look at that yard I don’t see Marcus,” Julia says. A shadow crosses her face and Peeta hates that he recognises her better that way. He is pathetic; he wants so much for her to have confidence, and at the first sign of it he undermines it. Has he truly become so selfish that he will bring everyone else down with him? “I see my daughter and the spring we made a fairy path out of flowers.

She points to a dab of colour on the lawn that Peeta had thought were paint splatters. The soft smile is back on Julia’s face and this time Peeta bites back the cruel retorts and the unkind questions.

“I taught my son to read there,” she continues, pointing to one of the rooms on the second floor. Her finger moves horizontally and then up and Peeta imagines that she is tracing some internal corridor and going up a secret staircase the painted wall is hiding. “My daughter had her first birthday party here and lost her first tooth here. My son’s first smile was here.”

Peeta has always been told that he has his father’s smile, the one that Thomas kept in reserve for his children, and in return had three adoring boys who would go to almost any length to earn them. He can't imagine his home without his father there, there is no way for it to exist in his mind. He still hopes, in the corner of him that he _knows_ is irrational, that Thomas will be hiding somewhere in District 12, just waiting for the son who misses him.

In that way he is lucky that he has his nightmares to remind him that nothing survives Katniss’ fire.

“You’re lost again,” Julia calls him back to the stuffy art room. Peeta tries to smile, gives his very best effort. He feels like a gargoyle, forever feigning an emotion he can never feel.

“Are they still there, waiting?” Peeta asks faintly, pretending the despair in his voice can be mistaken for forgiveness.

“Yes,” Julia sighs, a little sadly and with the same helplessness that Peeta has come to recognise as his native dialect. “He can take everything from me, but I’m still their mother. He can’t change that.”

She has a real reason to hope, Peeta thinks. He is familiar with the language of hatred, and the familiar tricks that a parent will use to try and turn their children against a wayward spouse. He also knows that soft touches and loving smiles are a language of their own and can mean more than all the blackmail, bribery and threats combined. Peeta would trade a hundred years with his mother if his father could tell him _well done, little boy_ again.

“No one’s waiting for me,” Peeta says. His eyes burn and he raises his paint-covered hand to wipe them away, smudging the Morphling’s flowers. He stops fighting as his shoulders start to heave; he is lost now, he knows it, and the only thing left is to cry until his body lets him stop.

“Peeta,” Julia says quietly and curls her fingers in his hair. Her shoulder presses against his tear-streaked cheeks and Peeta takes the offered comfort, using her small frame to hide his sadness. She pats his back awkwardly and he wishes that she had the ease with him that she did with her children, and the same ability to be comforted.

“Whenever I thought of home I always thought of my mother,” Peeta confesses when he is able to construct a sentence without sobbing. He has pulled away and wiped his face with his painting rag; he cannot imagine the mess he has made of his face.

“You miss her?” Julia asks sympathetically. Peeta snorts and her eyebrow raises in surprise.

“I hated her,” Peeta says with a decisive shake of his head. “That’s what made it so easy. If I thought about her I was almost...glad. If she was what I’d lost in District 12, then I could live with it. I miss her, she was my mother, and I loved her for that. But she was a terrible person and mother or not, I hated her.”

Julia looks afraid and he knows she is thinking of her own children, surely nearly grown, like him, and with the ability to form those same words.

“She was like your husband,” Peeta explains. Cruel and hate-filled, Peeta thinks that his mother and Julia’s husband would have made a very good match. “My father...he was my real family. And I haven’t thought about him once before now because if I didn’t, then he’d still be out there, thinking about me.”

“Some people from District 12 lived,” Julia offers and Peeta remembers the joy he’d felt when he’d seen Gale Hawthorn of all people and realise that must be true. He’d known that the image the Capitol had shown him of the remains of his home couldn’t be all there was. Somehow there had to be a happy ending; life couldn’t be so cruel. Not when he’d managed to live through everything else it had thrown at him.

He’d let his despair fuel the rage he felt for the girl who had caused it, because anger is far easier to survive than sorrow.

“He wasn’t one of them,” Peeta says. The tears are back. His father had used to wipe them away with a dough-scented sleeve and press a stolen cookie into his sticky hand. He had spent the few short days after Katniss left District 13 stalking the parts he had access to, interrogating anyone who might know anything about his family. It didn’t matter; if his father had been alive he would have come for Peeta long before then. Peeta had been searching for purpose and had remained unfilled.

“I’m sorry,” Julia says and then she laughs. Peeta stares at her in shock, but her face is not amused. “It’s such a stupid thing to say. Pointless.”

She’s right, but Peeta forgives her easily: there’s nothing she can say that will make any more sense.

“Peeta?” He has become so engrossed in his conversation with Julia that he has forgotten that there are other people here.

Doctor Aurelius is hovering around the door, where Peeta assumes he must lurk frequently. He is concerned again, an expression he often adopts when he thinks that Peeta can't meet a challenge he is about to be presented with. He has come to respect the limitations even as they chafe at his growing determination to be entirely his own person. He does his best to compromise by pushing up against the boundaries until they hurt he either breaks through or they push back and break him.

Before he follows he turns his painting around on the easel. It will smudge, possibly destroy the still-wet canvas, but now that it is out of his head Peeta has no interest in keeping it and even less in letting people claim it for their own, twisting his nightmares around on him until they become entirely his fault.

“What’s up?” Peeta asks neutrally, crossing his arms over his chest. Concern has become terrifying. It tells him that either he is wrong or everything around him is about to be. He follows his breathing exercises. The routine of it is enough that he is able to retain most of his control, and more importantly to be aware that he is losing some of it.

“Johanna Mason,” Doctor Aurelius hedges. Peeta presses his arms tighter. Johanna’s screams are the background soundtrack to his nightmare: the images change, but sometime during the night he will hear her screaming as she is tortured to discover the secrets Peeta has refused to tell them.

“Johanna Mason,” Peeta repeats, a statement more than a question. They have not spoken of her since their argument. He doesn’t accept that the fate of the other victors is none of his business, but he knows that he will never be able to convince Doctor Aurelius to speak. “What about her?”

“Come to my office,” Doctor Aurelius suggests. Peeta shakes his head, leaning back in a mirror of the doctor’s pose. He has spent enough time in that office that he could reproduce it exactly. If he is ever allowed to leave he will still see it whenever he closes his eyes. Whenever he cries he knows he will expect to open them again and find himself there.

He pointedly doesn’t pay attention, and perhaps that’s why he catches it this time: a genuine sense of human emotion on Doctor Aurelius’ face, and one that he is able to interpret with some measure of accuracy - the belief that Peeta is a puzzle he needs to crack, and the frustration that this one piece isn’t fitting in right. Peeta is convinced that they are looking at very different pictures on the box. There is concern there, too, if Peeta wants to be fair, and according to the vow made outside the phone booth he must be.

“Ms Mason wants to talk to you,” Doctor Aurelius says. Peeta’s eyebrows raise of their own accord and he nods without thinking. He doesn’t have much to say to his fellow victor, but whatever she asks of him, he’ll give her. He owes her that much. “Peeta, you shouldn’t feel obligated-”

“But I am,” Peeta says resolutely. “It’s my _responsibility_ and I want to own up to it.”

They have spoken a lot about responsibility and accountability. It always sounds twisted around to him: Peeta is not responsible for what happened to him, but he must be for how he reacts. It sounds backwards; he made the choice to rebel, so his torture was his own fault. The way they did it, what they took from him in doing so, that was their fault. He had paid once, terribly. He doesn’t understand why he must continue to do so, with every breath he takes.

“If you’re sure,” Doctor Aurelius murmurs unhappily. He turns and gestures for Peeta to follow him; apparently this new torment will be happening now, not after he has given himself time to both prepare and worry himself further. He follows, as he is always following some person or other. Even the route to Doctor Verrius’ office is now familiar, a path he has travelled shepherding Julia to and from the most painful of sessions.

He expects the screen to be large on the wall, but this time Johanna’s face takes up a small rectangle, the rest of the space sharply blank. She looks contrary, an attitude she has cultivated even more carefully than he has. There is a forcedness to her obnoxiousness and Peeta chews on his tongue; her shield has slipped, and he is partially responsible for it. He still owes her for paying for his sins.

“What, have you been finger-painting?” She asks, curling her lip in disdain. Peeta touches his pain-smeared face with his equally covered hand and bares his teeth in an expression that’s as far from a smile as possible while still using the same muscles. “You look ridiculous.”

“I still look better than you,” Peeta says bluntly. She has lost weight that she could ill afford to lose and the dark circles under her eyes are a brighter purple than the one he added to Julia’s painting. Her skin is pale and blotchy and the boldness that Peeta admired has become strained and brittle. “You look like shit, Johanna.”

Johanna laughs. He wonders how long it has been since anyone has been that honest with her. Insulting someone, even honestly, is verboten here. Everything is couched in positive endearments and concerned phrases: no one looks sick, they are tired. No one is broken, they are simply in need of a rest. Johanna Mason’s almost insult is the first real thing he has heard in months.

“Yeah, well, I’d prefer to be me right now,” she shoots back. “Look - my prison has soldiers.”

Peeta hasn’t been paying attention, but now that he looks, he can see the armed and uniformed guards that he remembers from his own brief stay there. He eyes one of the orderlies who glares back; if Peeta rushes him he might get a black eye, but he also wouldn’t be shot. A small improvement, but a critical one.

“Yeah, but have you got the padded cells?” Peeta asks with a disingenuous shrug of his shoulders. “They’re real, you know?”

“What, seriously?” Johanna asks, momentarily distracted. She stops tugging on the IV attached to her arm. Peeta recognises the Morphling drip he had been attached to. As glad as he is to be off it, his body gives a little shudder of craving and he traces the veins in the back of his hand, imagining a sharp needle sliding in there a sweet, soft rush of numbness fogging his pain away. “I thought they were just stories.”

“Yeah, me too,” Peeta said, pressing his thumb down on the fake freckles the IV had made. “Until they locked me in one.”

“No shit,” Johanna snorts. It seems so natural from her that Peeta is surprised to recall that he has never heard her swear before. “What did you do?”

“Smashed a television,” Peeta grins, glad that someone was finally getting some enjoyment out of the story. She rolls her eyes at him to indicate to him her opinion of Capitol luxuries like televisions and Peeta wrinkles his nose at her. “It had Katniss’ trial on it.”

The smile fades from Johanna’s face. Peeta is not watching her directly, but he is still fascinated to see other peoples’ reactions to his ex-fiance. Johanna doesn’t have any of the violence, frustration or adoration that Peeta is used to. Instead there is a wary sadness and a waver in her lip that makes her seem a decade younger.

“Did you hear her trial was over?” Johanna asks him soberly. Peeta lurches in on himself and focuses his eyes on the ornate red and gold carpet. His feet are too large for his shoes. They pinch and one of the toes is starting to push through the rubber-tipped plastic.

“Yeah, I heard.” Peeta says brusquely. “Not guilty. Mental trauma.”

That’s as much of a joke as anything else. He wonders if he’ll be able to use that defence when they get around to trying him, or whether Katniss has, as always, sucked up all the valuable sympathy for herself and left nothing for anybody else.

“Still hate her, huh?” Johanna probes. Doctor Verrius makes an audible huffing sound while Doctor Aurelius takes a step towards him. Peeta shoves his hands deep in his pockets, curling his fingers into the small puch of material and shakes his head.

“No, I don’t hate her,” Peeta says calmly. Doctor Aurelius nods in approval, although he doubts anyone here will be properly happy until he’s on his knees in front of her, begging forgiveness. “Is that what you wanted? To ask me about Katniss?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Johanna agrees. Peeta shouldn’t be surprised. Even here, where everyone wants to talk about him, his life somehow revolves around her.

“Why?” Peeta demands defensively. Last he heard Katniss actively disliked Johanna Mason and Johanna doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who would bother with people who felt that way.

“She’s my friend,” Johanna stares him down. Peeta pities her; Katniss has a habit of turning on her friends and throwing their scraps to the mutts. If Johanna’s instinctive shrewdness has been overwhelmed by whatever spell Katniss casts, nothing he says will make a difference. “Possibly the only one I have.”

“What a shock,” Peeta returns. The sting of his hurt overshadows the playful teasing they had been exchanging. Johanna nods, acknowledging the hit. She watches him as carefully as he avoids her and she opens her mouth more than once to speak words that Peeta doesn’t want to hear. He is grateful that she is perceptive enough not to say them.

“So I thought you were this art genius or something,” Johanna accuses finally. Her tone is light, lacking accusation. Peeta doesn’t know how she can look at him without hatred. “Don’t you know that the paint goes on the paper?”

Peeta raises his hand to the light and twists it about. There is more paint than not, not just Julia’s lavender but his own reds, greys and blacks. He looks the image of Johanna directly in the eyes and squares his shoulders.

“I’ll have you know finger painting is a perfectly valid form of therapy,” Peeta says haughtily. Doctor Aurelius gives a muffled laugh while Johanna looks at him incredulously.

“You’re joking,” she says hopefully and Peeta keeps his straight face long enough for her jaw to fall open. Her eyes are so wide that Peeta can see the red veins around the edges, marring the white.

“Yeah,” Peeta agrees, a smile flashing as fast and brief as lightning, over his face. “But painting apparently is and I guess it makes a bit of a mess.”

“Huh,” Johanna says, perplexed. “They’ll take anything you’d be doing anyway and call it a cure, won’t they?”

Peeta nods along with her. He purposely doesn’t look at the doctors, but Johanna has never been that subtle and she stares at them with undisguised irritation. He’d love to get her opinions on music therapy and literature therapy and nature therapy. She doesn’t appear a stranger in this room; he wonders how often she is suffering through these consultations.

“So what were you painting?” She asks when the silent Doctor Verrius begins to tap his fingers on the hard wood of his desk. “Flowers and trees and sunshine and shit?”

“I was helping my roommate with a picture of her house,” Peeta her a part of the truth. Until he has properly decided which of them is the monster, he doesn’t want to show his Katniss mutt to anyone. “She misses it. It’s all she ever wants to paint.”

“So why doesn’t she just go back?” Johanna asks sensibly. Peeta looks at Doctor Verrius who stares back at him belligerently. Peeta has measuring his words, trying not to say anything that would brand him still sick, but he is becoming increasingly paranoid that nothing he does matters; the decision has already been made and he will never be allowed to leave here.

“She doesn’t have any more choice than we do,” Peeta says, the bitterness sticking in his throat. He massages it until it hurts and still he can’t soothe away how completely stuck he feels. He frowns at his captors and the on-screen miniature of Johanna does the same.

"I’m surprised you haven’t gone home,” Peeta comments to Johanna. He is not shocked that she ended up in District 13; they’d clearly hauled her in from the hospital, drugged, to participate in Coin’s Games vote, as they had with him. What astounds him is that Johanna clearly feels as robbed of freedom as he does; he can’t believe that she has let herself remain trapped like the caged animal Peeta has become.

“I don’t have a home,” Johanna says, her voice wound tight. Peeta sees a tear gather on one of her eyelashes, catching the light like a little diamond. She blinks and it is gone, a much-practised deception, and behind him comes the scratch of pen on paper, recording her slip for eternity.

“It’s still there,” Peeta said, testing the thought. He has lost so many things but he doesn’t want to believe that he could have lost that many people, letting them die ignobly without a hint of his attention. “District 8 is still there.”

“That doesn’t make it home,” Johanna laughs hoarsely. Her arms are moving wildly and Peeta is afraid that the technology exists that will let her reach through the screen because he knows that she wants to hit him. It is written in her gestures, in the way that her hands return to waver in front of the camera, tense and threatening.

This must be how her opponents felt, facing her in the arena.

“Homes are fake,” she continues angrily, all traces of the sad lethargy gone. Peeta recognises her now, strong and determined and no one’s puppet. “When we’re young and gullible they tell us _these_ people are our family. They live _there_ , in that house, doing _that_ thing and that’s our home. And because we’re stupid, we believe them. We care. If we don’t behave, they take it away and watch us fall to pieces, and never once do they tell us that they’d made it all up in the first place. So what we’re missing is just an illusion that they invented to keep us stuck where they wanted us.”

Peeta tilts his head as he contemplates this. It is a convenient definition, one that absolves him of any guilt or responsibility to the people he left behind. He would gladly toss his mother into that pit; perhaps might go so far as to sentence his brothers there for his own sanity.

He doesn’t need to ask Johanna if she misses her family. The guilt is painted like a picture in between all the things she will never say.

“My father,” Peeta says, two words, to explain how he can’t let himself believe her. She may be right, home and family may be an illusionary construct, designed to ensure no one ever strayed far from where they are told to be, but he will always let himself be fooled by it if it means his father’s fierce love for him was real.

“My baby brother,” Johanna whispers when Peeta looks away. He pretends not to hear her, let her secrets remain her own.

“So where will you go?” Peeta asks instead, jerking his head towards to two doctors who are not bothering to hide their interest. “When your jailers let you out?”

Doctor Aurelius goes so far as to make a face at him. Peeta smiles involuntarily with a mock glare; he does not forget who keeps him here, but he also remembers what he has promised. He will keep up his half of the bargain and while he does not trust, not anymore, but he is starting to allow hope. He hopes Doctor Aurelius will keep his own promise.

“Dunno,” Johanna says, dismissively. “With all my options I just can’t choose.”

“Yeah, I doubt I’ll ever get out of here, either,” Peeta nods. Johanna meets his eyes and she softens, just a little. He has the uncomfortable feeling he has made another friend, given away another small piece of his heart that will remain unguarded and easily broken, traded away by the new owner when something better comes along. “We’ll be celebrating our 50ths by phone call.”

“Probably,” Johanna snorts, shaking her shaggy hair. She tugs at her IV cord and Peeta sees the last of the bag empty itself into the plastic. An infirmary worker with a sour face replaces it gently. Johanna winces and Peeta shakes his arms, adding to his list. _I will not trade that pain for more Morphling. I don’t need drugs. Real or not real?_ He is strong enough to deal with this, that will be real; he has no choice.

“What about you?” Johanna asks unexpectedly. Doctor Verrius is holding the remote at the screen, his finger hovering over one of the buttons, ready to sever their connection. “Where would you go if you broke out of here?”

Peeta looks at his two hands, his large, too-smooth baker’s hands. He has seen all the districts, some far bigger and more beautiful than District 12. He thinks of Julia’s pastel-coloured mansion and the sound of the sea crashing into the rocks as the train sped through District 4. His last birthday cake, a small, one bite treat, was the colour of the sun setting over the seam.

“Back to District 12, I think,” Peeta says faintly, wiping some of the dried paint off his fingers. “I want to...to see, I guess. What’s there now.”

The television flickers off, but before it does Peeta would swear that Johanna said _be careful_.

\--#--@ @--#--

Peeta’s chair is in the middle of the room. There is nothing at his back and without turning his head manically he can’t see every part of the room at once. This is considered a big step. The first time he did it without collapsing in panic he was given grounds privileges and access to the music room. The latter was nearly revoked the first time he attempted to play an instrument but with a promise that he would stick to the drum, he was allowed to retain it.

He likes the drum. He likes being able to beat away at something without watching it break.

Doctor Aurelius is pretending to be wary, given away by the occasional quirk at the corner of his mouth when he thinks Peeta is not looking. It is a slow process, re-teaching himself the variety of human expression; daytime television has been surprisingly helpful. He may never be as good as he was, but focusing on the individual movements of someone’s face and how their body reacts to interaction is calming.

It means he is not concentrating on their intent, an idea that still has the potential to fray at Peeta’s control.

“Tell me about the altercation today,” Doctor Aurelius commands in his measured voice. There is no sharpness to it, nor is his face closed in any obvious way. There is no evidence of judgement there, so Peeta squashes firmly down on his faulty conscience that takes to heart everything he does and twists it into blame.

“I wouldn’t call it an altercation,” Peeta protests. He has another little rubber ball to play with if the conversation becomes too difficult. He took longer than he should have to replace it, to convince himself that he didn’t need to punish himself for all his sins by doing without. “I just stood there.”

“Yes, your black eye attests to that,” Doctor Aurelius drawls, his strange Capitol accent becoming more pronounced. “Not to mention the complaint lodged by a senior politician this afternoon.”

“Former,” Peeta says sharply. He doesn’t know if eyes can really flash, but if they do his will be now. He sits straighter in his chair and abandons his yellow ball on the table so that he can tangle his fingers around the arms of his wooden chain, craving the press of sharp edges against the skin of his inner arm. “ _Former_ politician.”

“Yes, of course,” Doctor Aurelius says. The carefully neutral voice serves him well; Peeta can’t begin to fathom his opinion on the dissolution of his government. Officially he is obviously neutral. Anyone who is otherwise is arrested and held in a prison that formerly housed Capitol citizens that had offended President Snow in some way, but were too rich or too influential to be executed outright.

He suspects that the doctors are distinctly unimpressed that non-Capitol broadcasts have replaced the ones that were so sympathetic to their terrible situation.

“Would his position have made his complaint more valid?” Peeta asks curiously. Doctor Aurelius cringes and Peeta curls his lip in disgust. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Nevertheless,” Doctor Aurelius continues with a frown that is almost in Peeta’s direction. It misses because Doctor Aurelius doesn’t want to look at him, something that makes Peeta more confident. He would feel powerful if he were not aware of just how small a cage he is trapped in. “You’re injured and a _visitor_ claims it was self-defence.”

“You’re joking,” Peeta gapes. The amount of self-control required to not wrap his fingers around the man’s neck and squeeze was phenomenal. He’d been proud of his restraint; he should have known better. It would have been far more satisfying to give in, feel the man flail as Peeta watched the life drain out of his eyes. “That’s pathetic. I knew you were all weak, but...”

“Us?” Doctor Aurelius interrupts him. Peeta resents the parental disapproval in his voice. Julia told him, during one of their discussions on parenthood, that the one thing her children could do to annoy her was to ignore her scolding. Anger, attitude and defiance are easy to fight when she was in control; an absolute disregard for what authority she had was not. He reminds himself he should thank her, when he is done testing the theory.

“Yes, you.” Peeta replies in the same imperious tone. “People from the Capitol. You’re so afraid of people standing up to you that you terrorise them until they’re too afraid to even look you in the eye. Then when they do fight back you bluster about and try to destroy them rather than admitting they have a point. You’ll do anything to avoid admitting you’re wrong.”

“And do you think I’m _terrorising_ you?” Doctor Aurelius asks cuttingly. He is meant to feel guilty, Peeta knows, does feel guilty until he can chastise himself for falling into the well-laid trap.

“You don’t torture me, or use physical threats,” Peeta says, looking pointedly around the office. “But you keep me here against my will, even though you have no right to be deciding my life. Despite what you think, you’re not a benevolent deity and just because you can control people on a whim doesn’t mean you should. You may use different methods, but the result is the same. It’s still a type of terror, and what you do can be just as bad and you are one of them.”

Doctor Aurelius’ eyes are wide. Peeta has expressed simple truths, obvious truths, but the doctor seems staggered by them. He’d bet what little he has that a great many people have tried to express something similar and been summarily ignored. He is not sure what makes him so special; perhaps it is that he has actually been tortured and has a valid comparison. Or maybe, if Peeta puts his ego aside, it has nothing to do with him at all, this is just the right time for this to be said.

“Interesting,” Doctor Aurelius murmurs and begins to scribble in his ever-present notebook. Peeta can see his hand trembling and the ink smudging. He smiles, small and pleased, that his words have unsettled the man. When he speaks again his voice is equally unsteady and Peeta leans forward in curiosity. “I don’t see what an innocent bystander has to do with-”

“He wasn’t an innocent bystander, don’t be disingenuous,” Peeta says snidely, borrowing one of the doctor’s own big words. “He was Julia’s husband and you _know_ what he’s done. He’s the sick one and you let him lock her up here so she can’t tell the truth about him while he prances around out there trying to make himself look important to the new government. He’s exactly the sort of bully I was talking about and you enable him.”

Something about Peeta’s rant returns a measure of confidence to Doctor Aurelius. Peeta should be nervous, but he knows there is a spot now, a weakness. Somewhere he can press and work at until Doctor Aurelius is forced to see his point of view or give up fighting in the attempt. His stand is not just for his own comfort, not this time, but he gives himself permission not to think of that. He can do one thing to help someone else without becoming responsible for them; he does not need to feel the weight of their lives on his shoulders.

“Julia is frail,” Doctor Aurelius lectures him, not for the first time. Peeta rolls his eyes obviously, and takes perverse pleasure in seeing the difficulty the doctor has in maintaining his own perfect composure.

“She’s fragile, she’s not incompetent,” Peeta waves away Julia’s illness with a dismissive hand. “But you’re punishing her because she couldn’t fight back.”

“We’re trying to help her,” Doctor Aurelius says, his voice raised. Peeta shakes his head in disgust, sincerely hoping that this was another attempt to appear deliberately obtuse; it is a far better prospect than a man in charge of all these lives being so easily brainwashed.

“So treat her from home,” Peeta suggests, tucking his real leg under his fake one, propping it up to give it a rest. Even no longer attached to him, his left left aches with the weather. It is not cold outside, but a storm is coming. He can feel it in the parts of him that have been stitched back together. “Like you do with Johanna, and I suspect a number of other clients who pay well in one way or another. Let her stay on from home and lock up the guy who uses her like a punching bag.”

Doctor Aurelius massages his temples with tense fingers. They crack as he applies too much pressure; much more and he and Peter will sport matching bruises. He notices with interest the way the doctor’s chest rises and falls in careful time; practicing the same breathing exercises he has taught Peeta. They don't seem to be any more effective when someone else is trying them.

“It’s nice that you’re standing up for a fellow patient,” Doctor Aurelius says, too sweetly. “It’s a good sign.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Peeta snaps. He kicks out at the desk with his good leg. Doctor Aurelius jumps at the loud thump and Peeta stares at him. “Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.”

“You’ve been getting along with Julia,” Doctor Aurelius continues, ignoring Peeta entirely. Peeta sucks in a deep breath, the same thrilling rage he has been doing so well at training himself out of, that took such joy in destroying images of the Mockingjay, coursing its way through his veins. He sinks a little lower in his chair, planting both feet firmly on the floor. He raises his own voice, mingling with the doctor’s as he tries to make the man listen.

“So that’s how you managed to watch us all kill each other?” Peeta says over Doctor Aurelius’ determined lecturing. “By ignoring it every time your conscience dared to show itself?”

“That’s not why I brought you here!” Doctor Aurelius yells, dropping his hand so heavily to his desk that he scatters pens all over the neat surface.

“Yeah, you’ve never told me why you brought me here,” Peeta points out. He has asked that question a hundred different ways to a dozen people who would have had the authority to make that decision. None of them had deigned to answer him. “And since you brought up the subject, I’d love to know what gave you the idea that you could take what was left of my life away from me.”

“I meant to my office,” Doctor Aurelius says harriedly. His fingers return to his temples, circling counterclockwise. His lips are barely moving and Peeta can make out numbers: the doctor is trying to count himself into calmness.

“Well I know that,” Peeta says. He wants to take pleasure in this encounter, in finally, _finally_ having a strength of his own. It is hard to enjoy his moment when it comes at the expense of someone so typically calm. It is only the desire to break through the man’s delusions that lets him continue. “You wanted to lecture me.”

Doctor Aurelius holds his head in his hands as he shakes it. He looks exhausted. Each time he blinks in tiredness Peeta feels a little more aware, as though he is somehow draining the doctor’s strength and making it his own. His spine grows straighter and he feels light, weightless.

“No,” Doctor Aurelius shakes his head with all of the helplessness that Peeta has been struggling with under his tutelage. He sounds bewildered and Peeta thinks they both might be wondering how they got here. “I wanted to ask a favour of you.”

“A favour?” Peeta asks, baffled. “What on earth makes you think I’d do a favour for you?”

The idea of what a favour could be in this place makes him shudder. He has not heard from District 13 since the aborted phone call, but he is in the Capitol. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if one of its citizen had secured their own position by sacrificing his.

“Peeta, I’ve been trying to _help_ you,” Doctor Aurelius says. He sounds so sad that even Peeta’s resolve, fuelled by the deaths of thousands of children who didn’t deserve to die, crumbles at the edges.

“You have helped me,” Peeta is forced to admit; it will not help his position to be anything other than truthful now. Not without becoming like them, lying for no reason but to further their own agenda and importance. Peeta’s lies always had a greater purpose. “But you never gave me a choice about how.”

Something in Doctor Aurelius seems to break. It is small and it is subtle, and Peeta doubts it will make any difference as he goes about his life, but perhaps the next time he is about to take someone’s choice away he’ll hesitate. Reconsider.

“You’re right,” Doctor Aurelius tells him and there is no small amount of regret in his words. It will likely be the only apology that Peeta ever receives and he has a choice in it. He takes a moment; not to decide, but to savour the idea that he can choose. He can get it right, or horribly wrong, but the consequences rest on him alone. He nods, a silent acceptance of an unspoken atonement. “I wanted to talk about Katniss.”

“We always talk about Katniss,” Peeta muses. Compared to what he is afraid of, this is as close to painless as this facility allows. “You know everything I know now.”

Doctor Aurelius snorts, a sound very much like Peeta’s own responses in their early sessions. Peeta smiles, small and genuine, and wonders whether he would have liked this man had they met under different circumstances and had not been from such very different worlds.

“I’ve been appointed her therapist too,” Doctor Aurelius says. Peeta gasps, an instinctive, indoctrinated habit that no longer has any basis in reality. He forces himself to relax, repeating his chant in his head. _Katniss Everdeen is a perfectly ordinary teenage girl, not a Capitol mutt: real or not real?_

“You’re bringing her here?” Peeta asks. He can’t picture Katniss here, in the confines of Doctor Aurelius’ institution. He doesn’t believe she will survive it; she is not made for walls and cages. She needs space to lose herself in, escape from.

“No. There are...difficulties,” Doctor Aurelius says self-consciously. Peeta would love to see inside his head, to understand whether it is that Peeta has called him on his hypocrisy or that he does have a conscience, well-hidden and twisted by where he grew up. “I’ll be treating her from a distance.”

“So what’s the problem?” Peeta asks, continuing in his relaxation exercises despite the slow relaxation that comes from learning he is safe from her.

“She’s being..uncooperative,” Doctor Aurelius admits unhappily and Peeta laughs. It is deep and happy and not a little petty. He gains vindictive pleasure from watching others be forced to deal with the girl who was used as a weapon to break him. He has forgiven her for that, for being the bullet that shot at him, as she was not the gun and did not pull the trigger.

“She does that,” Peeta agrees, biting his lip to hide a smirk. “But I don’t get what that has to do with me.”

“It’s not professional, discussing one patient with another. It does happen, but it’s not often recommended,” Doctor Aurelius begins. He has the air of someone starting a long tale. Peeta quirks an eyebrow at him and Doctor Aurelius starts, shaking his head. “Alright, I’ll get straight to it: I need any advice you can give me.”

“No,” Peeta says easily, guiltlessly. “It’s kind of shitty, asking me that, when we’ve just been talking about how I don’t get that chance.”

Doctor Aurelius sighs, long and slow. If he had glasses Peeta expects that he would be taking them off and wiping them to give himself a subtle way to stall. Without them he resorts to looking wildly around the room, eyes nearly shut to hide their movement.

“Well, I suppose that could be negotiated,” he says finally and Peeta’s jaw drops open in shock.

“You’re so desperate to get a hold of her that you’ll trade me for it?” Peeta asks in clarification. He presses his stomach, pushing at a wave of nausea. This is the first time he has felt sorry for her; in all his own struggles he has forgotten how many people want to use her for one purpose or another. The weight is heavy now and he hates himself for the words he is about to say, but he knows he will hate himself more if he agreed to the doctor’s trade.

“What? No, of course not,” Doctor Aurelius sputters before Peeta can throw his freedom away for Katniss as easily as he almost did his life. “It was something that I’ve been...considering for a while now. In light of this conversation, however, it has occurred to me that it might be prudent to accelerate it slightly.”

Peeta has next to nothing now, but he would bet that all consideration had occurred in the previous hour. He would also wager that the only parts of the conversation that will ever be relevant are the ones that will reveal to Doctor Aurelius his own wilful ignorance. It is never fun learning that your own shadows are just as dark and deep as the people you revile.

“I’m not going to help you trap anyone here,” Peeta warns him. He has come to value it so slowly that he hasn’t realised before this moment how very much he wants to be free from here. He curses the contrary part inside him that tosses it aside like garbage due to some half-formed ‘principle’. “I’m not going to take anyone else’s choice away from them, not even hers.”

“It’s not that simple, Peeta,” Doctor Aurelius’ words contain their own warning. Nothing is simple, Peeta knows this now. He is not capable of thinking anything relating to the Capitol could be so. “I’ve been ordered to treat her, intensively.”

“Ordered?” Peeta echoes. “By who?”

“The government,” Doctor Aurelius says, his mouth making a distinct effort not to spit. Peeta hasn’t been under the impression they had a government; there are so many factions scrabbling for the rabble no one has been able to make a cohesive decision. “As a part of her sentence.”

“I thought they said she was innocent,” Peeta says. He has to wrack his memory for the information. He so carefully avoided everything for so long that concentrating on it is difficult. His conversation with Johanna provides a frame of reference for him; he knows he didn’t imagine that.

“Due to mental trauma,” Doctor Aurelius counters unhappily. “And part of that verdict requires her to be under the care of a psychiatrist until such a time as she is no longer dangerous. And since I was the doctor overseeing the hospital when she was brought in, she was assigned to me under the assumption that we had something of a rapport.”

That’s the saddest joke Peeta has heard in months. He pities Doctor Aurelius for being the butt of it.

“And you don’t,” Peeta says. It is not a question. Doctor Aurelius shakes his head briefly, steepling his fingers on his desk. “But you’ve met her at least.”

“Yes, I had some time with her after her sister died,” Doctor Aurelius replies thoughtfully. “She wouldn’t speak with me. I had to observe her under less than honest pretensions.”

“Less than honest?” Peeta asks, thickly. He has never grieved for Primrose Everdeen, he barely knew her, but she was everything to Katniss and he is surprised the little girl didn’t take her older sister with her when she died.

“I pretended to take a nap and watched her when she wasn’t looking,” Doctor Aurelius admits so frankly that Peeta starts to laugh again.

“That sounds about right,” Peeta decides, although he suspects that Katniss must have had some idea - she has had too much experience at people watching her not to notice it happening. “I still don’t see what you want from me, though.”

“Whatever you can give me,” Doctor Aurelius requests. Peeta watches him, much the same as he would have watched Katniss months ago. “She won’t answer the phone, something I hope you will convince her to do when you go home. And when she does I need to know how to speak to her, how to get through to her.”

Peeta weighs up the offer, examines it from every angle. It seems too easy, too weighted in his favour to be as simple as he is being told. He distrusts it, but he distrusts everything now and all he needs is to get out the door.

“All right,” he says, slowly and cautiously. He is as careful with his words as he was his examination and he meets Doctor Aurelius’ gaze with determination to ensure the man understands that he is serious about what he is saying. “I’ll tell you. On the day you let me go.”

Doctor Aurelius frowns but nods his agreement. Peeta smiles, wide and pleased. He lets himself dream for a moment, of Capitol luxuries, the wide fields of District 4 and the expansive forests of District 7. They all appeal to him in some way, but he knows that he will end up in District 12. There is nothing there but a long-awaited goodbye, one he has owed his father for long enough.

\--#--@ @--#--

The days have ticked down too slowly. Peeta has been instructed to pack, attend his last therapy sessions and to say his goodbyes. He has no possessions to pack and has refused to see Doctor Aurelius until he leaves. The only person he would wish to say goodbye to has been pointedly ignoring him and he doesn’t blame her; he should have negotiated her freedom too.

The doctor is needed to discharge him. Doctor Aurelius has pointedly insisted on conducting his usual morning sessions. Peeta has attempted to waste the time going down each hallway again, memorising each corner so that he knows where to hide when he ends up back here in his nightmares.

When he finds himself outside the phone booth he is not sure what he is meant to do with it. He has had the number that will apparently reach Johanna tucked away in his pocket for over a month, but he hasn’t yet bothered to use it. He touches the pocket on his shirt carefully, patting the nearly imperceptible paper to ensure it is still there.

The hallway is empty. Peeta is so used to the facility being crowded that he pauses and scans his surroundings for any sign of surveillance or an ambush. There is nothing obvious, but that doesn’t mean much; he has never been much good at seeing incoming danger. He is much better at watching in shock as it hit him and tore everything he believed away.

He opens the booth that contains the telephone methodically, running his fingers over each surface in turn. He pulls the number out of his pocket; it is flat, dishevelled and rumpled from careless handling, but the digits are legible. He types them into the pad on the phone, feeling foolish when nothing happens. He picks up the receiver and tries again. He is rewarded with a bell ringing in his ear. It forms a song, the familiar strains of the Panem anthem. He finds himself reciting the words in his mind by rote, made familiar from seventeen years of practice and reaping days.

He is in the middle of the second verse, describing the glory and mercy of the Capitol when it cuts off abruptly and is replaced with a long silence. Peeta shakes the receiver and puts it back to his ear, straining to hear something on the other side.

“What?” Johanna says eventually, and Peeta smiles. She sounds prepared for an argument and he hopes that a large number of people she doesn’t like have attempted this and been on the wrong side of her sharp tongue. He is not sure she likes him much, but he hopes that the news he wishes to impart will go a short way towards helping her tolerate him.

“Hello Johanna,” Peeta says awkwardly. He wishes now that he had asked someone for instructions on how he is meant to act while using one of these, but he has promised himself that he will avoid Capitol manners at all costs. “It’s Peeta. Peeta Mellark.”

“Oh, right, you,” Johanna answers, but she sounds more cheerful. “The Capitol zoo still feeding you well?”

“Not for much longer,” Peeta broaches hesitantly. The silence on the other end of the line deepens and through Johanna’s lack of response he can hear the workings of District 13’s infirmary. He would be astounded if he were allowed to hear even these mundane actions. He’ll let Johanna deal with that; she is more than capable of standing up for herself. “They’re letting me out.”

“How did you wrangle that?” Johanna asks. Her voice hitches.

“Blackmail,” Peeta says. His hand starts to ache; he is holding the receive so tightly that the sharp edges are digging into his palm. He takes a deep breath and switches it to his other hand, flexing his fingers to get them to loosen. “Bribery. Something like that.”

“Nice,” Johanna admits with a tinge of admiration in her tone. He prefers that to the sadness she can’t quite hide. It helps to ease the pressure in his chest, the bubble of fear and confusion that has been eating at him for a week. “I wish I had something like that.”

“Maybe you do,” Peeta offers. He has changed his mind repeatedly since this idea occurred to him. He had been determined that he would not do it as he started the trek down this hallway; his impulsive decision as he saw the phone booth has started haunting him before he has enacted it.

“And what would that be?” She grumbles. Peeta recognises this: she is himself a month ago. Well enough to contemplate a life outside her jail cell, and so accustomed to their routine she has forgotten the parts of her that would let her escape.

“Me,” Peeta says simply. rocking backwards and forwards on the ball of his good foot. He is still too large for this space and each movement hits him against one of the walls. “District 13 called me a while ago. They wanted something from me and I didn’t give it to them. I’d wager they still do. You can tell them I said I’d think about it, but not until they let you out.”

“They wouldn’t believe me,” Johanna says, but she is more cheerful buoyed by the small bit of hope he has offered her.

“They know where to find me,” Peeta shrugs, remembering belatedly that she will not be able to see it. “They can call me to check. I’ll tell them the same thing.”

Johanna’s breath is heavy as she contemplates his offer. He will not take it back now that he made it, but he crosses each of his fingers briefly that she will have a surge of pride and turn him down, choosing to make it on her own initiative.

“They don’t like these sorts of deals,” Johanna warns him. “Not after the one Katniss made to save us.”

Peeta hasn’t heard of the deal she’s discussing and he is bothered by the use of the word _us_. He has considered himself and Katniss even: he didn’t kill her after he was tortured for her benefit and she saved his life. He doesn’t want another debt to owe her, nor the need to find another way to make amends.

“It’s all I’ve got,” Peeta sighs, pressing his hand against the glass wall. It leaves a hand print when he pulls away and Peeta wonders how long that part of him will remain here before someone else notices and washes it away. “If they want me enough, they’ll listen. If not...”

“I’ll figure something else out,” Johanna interrupts, saying exactly what Peeta had been about to. He smiles, feeling a little bit warmer. It has been a long time since he was on the same wavelength as anyone else. “You don’t have to do this, you know. It’s not your job to save me. Or anyone.”

“Yeah, I know,” Peeta agrees. He has told himself the same thing, every morning he has woken up from a nightmare that saw him fail to do exactly that. “But I can choose to. Which I do. So don’t make a big deal about it, please?”

“Guess that means I’ll see you on the outside, then,” Johanna says, silently accepting his offer. “You’ll have to decide what you want in return.”

It is a recent lesson, one Peeta learned from Katniss. He has spent most of his life convinced that the act of giving is enough; he doesn’t need to receive in return to make it worthwhile. It took a Capitol torture room to kill that belief an install a new one: some gifts are debts, and some debts can’t be easily repaid.

Johanna has always known this. He can't imagine how difficult it must be for her to accept, knowing he can claim whatever he wants in return.

“Easy,” Peeta says with a grin. “Grow out that hairstyle, you look hideous. Why do you think I used the phone rather than the camera?”

Johanna starts to laugh. Peeta replaces the receiver before she stops. He is not sure he will ever see her again. If that’s true he wants her laughter to be the last thing he remembers of her.

Peeta doesn’t have a watch, nor any way to tell whether time has passed. He decides to take the chance that it is enough and opens the cubicle door, pointing himself in the direction of Doctor Aurelius’ office. On the way he pokes his head into what is no longer his bedroom, hoping to see Julia. As usual she is gone.

“Peeta.” Julia’s voice comes from behind him. Peeta jumps high enough to hit his head on the low doorway. He winces and rubs at the newly sore spot; it will leave a bump if he does not put ice on it, a simple resource he does not have access to. Does District 12 have electricity yet? He doesn't know whether having his own home again will let him have the simple things he has been denied here.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Peeta says, turning with a tentative smile. She has dark circles under her eyes, but there is no evidence of the red swelling that tells him she’s been crying. He is glad of it; he will admit to a few tears at the friend he is leaving behind, but he prefers not to have caused her more pain.

“I know,” Julia says. Her smile is small and insincere. It is nothing like the rare grin he has taught himself to procure: bright, transforming her entire face and filling her with a gentle light that shines as brightly as the North Star. Distant, but a way home, once he learned what to look for. “I didn’t want to...”

She bites her lip and Peeta watches a tear snake its way down her artificially smooth cheek. He pulls his sleeve over his hand and wipes the drop away before it drops off her chin. She takes a deep breath and shudders halfway through. Peeta throws caution to the wind and pulls her into a hug, letting her bury her head in his shoulder so that no one can see her cry.

Julia looks ashamed when she pulls away. Peeta studiously avoids looking at her blotchy face, or his tear-stained shirt. She uses her own sleeve to wipe away the remainder of the moisture on her face. He waits until she has pulled her hair back, not wanting to compound any embarrassment she might feel with an imagined judgement.

“I wanted to be so brave when I did this,” Julia whispers. Peeta smiles and tucks a flyaway greying curl back behind her ear.

“You are brave,” he reassures her. She shakes her head instinctively and Peeta nods with her exaggeratedly until she laughs. “You’re the only one who doesn’t see it, you know.”

That is not quite true. There are many people outside of here that would not see Julia’s quiet strength, or would find it entertaining to manipulate. He supposes there is merit in trying to help her, to teach her to trust herself, but he will never be convinced she has to be trapped here to do it.

"Well, I wasn't going to cry, at any rate," Julia sniffles again and Peeta holds out his arm to offer her his sleeve again. She shakes her head, her face crumbling. She breathes in slowly and her face relaxes, transforming into a smile so blatantly false that Peeta feels the sting of tears in his own eyes. "I just wanted to apologise."

"You don't-" Peeta starts and Julia shakes her head, holding up her hand.

"Yes, I do. I'm sorry that I didn't talk to you this week," she says, biting down on her lower lip. She braces herself; Peeta fights the urge to raise his hands to his face and trace his fingers over it, exploring whether his expression is as monstrous as it feels right now. "And I'm sorry that I didn't...that I didn't tell my husband to sponsor you instead of her. He wanted-"

"I know what he wanted," Peeta interjects, turning away. He doesn't want to mar his memories of Julia with that thought, and he thinks instead of their paintings together, how she woke him up from the worst of his nightmares, and how she was the only person who laughed as hard as he did when Jasmine and Serena had their big, white wedding. Julia's lower lip trembles; she has likely never admitted it to herself, but there is a part of her that knows it too. "Let's not talk about this. Not today."

He doesn't have much else to say, not after that. He has forgotten, in a way that he can't understand, that she was as much Capitol as everyone here. He was entertainment for her long before he was a friend, and he is not sure that mental transformation can ever really be made.

"Peeta, I-", she starts. Peeta puts his hand up in a mirror of her earlier gesture; he has known her, here, longer than he was ever in the arena, but it is these memories that come to him now. Little Rue, small and terrified on her landing pad, the girl from 8, terrified in death. Glimmer, covered in the marks of the same venom that was practice for what they would do to him.

"It's all right," Peeta lies, clenching his jaw to keep in all the things he wants to say. "You didn't know."

"Yes, I did," Julia shakes and her tears start again; Peeta is far less inclined to wipe them away. "That's why I'm sorry."

Peeta nods, bobbing his head long after he has made his point. He is not sure what is worse; wilful ignorance or purposeful silence. He is not sure he can count Julia's silence as a sin, when every opinion has been so carefully trained out of her.

"I forgive you," he offers finally, shrugging his shoulders. "But that's just me. There's a lot of people who can't anymore."

"I know," Julia says. There is a strength to it, a resolve. Peeta hopes that will be something she can hold on to, that making amends will give her a better purpose. That may be too much to ask of someone from the Capitol, but it is all he has left to wish for.

Julia has a watch on her wrist, and Peeta struggles to decipher the upside down numbers. It is past time for him to go. He has been waiting so long for the opportunity to seize his freedom and run with it before anyone else has a chance to steal it away, and here he is, unable to leave.

"I'm going to miss you," he says finally. He has always chosen his friends carefully, wanting to be sure that they possess all the qualities he values, and none of the sickness that he has seen as pervading the Capitol. Julia is an anathema to all of that, but he would be lying to himself if he did not call her a friend anyway. "You'll have to...to come visit me. When you're...when you leave."

"I've never been to the districts before," she says nonsensically. It is a test, although Peeta is loathe to admit it. If she is willing to come, then she might be everything he has wanted to believe. If not...well, then he will know and he will never need to think of her after today. "I'm sure it will be an adventure. And I can introduce you to my oth...to my children."

If he had been born in the Capitol, Peeta would have been proud to have her as a mother. Even hating it as he did, there are more moments than he can count when he would have traded his own for this woman, for kindness and affection rather than cruel distance. He is tired of being blamed because she was his father's second choice.

He embraces her again, fiercely, and imagines a small piece of his hatred for this city falling away. He doesn't know if it will work, if he will ever be able to let go of it, but even imagining a time where he doesn't despise every part of it is a small piece of contentment.

"I have to go," Peeta says, muffled by her hair. "I'll write. And figure out that stupid phone when I get back to the Victor's...well, when I get home anyway."

He is not sure how much of the Victor's Village is still standing, but he is sure that somewhere he will be able to find a working phone. If not, then he will find a way to send a small letter by post, or a message with someone who is coming to visit. He will find some way to see her again.

"And I'll come visit," Julia agrees with a soft sigh. When she lets him go with the same affection that he thinks her children might have been gifted with. She pats his cheek softly, blinking away a last round of tears. Peeta turns before he can join her, reminding himself that every step away is not a goodbye. It is just a pause until she is deemed better and she can come find him again.

They have time, the both of them. Eventually Peeta will be able to convince himself that not everything has to be done now, that not every moment is his last.

Dr Aurelius has told him that a dozen times.

The doctor himself is waiting for him in the hallway to the main exit. Peeta has passed by here so often that he barely notices anymore. He had thought that when he was allowed to go through it, it would become more than just a door; something like a symbol of how far he has come, and all the parts of himself that he has been able to put back together.

"So, I have something you want," Peeta greets him. The doctor's eyes are tight, but rather than relaxing when he finds out that Peeta is prepared to fulfil his end of the deal, he becomes tenser. Peeta smiles wryly. This is not the happy and charming boy the doctor saw in interviews; he doubts anything less than that would ever be enough.

He is forced to make his final decision: the doctor was, indeed, a very great idiot, albeit a very helpful one. How a trained psychiatrist could have missed all the signs that Peeta was utterly terrified, every second, and that each time he made a joke with Caesar Flickerman he was fighting back sheer hatred, for the man and for what he was doing.

"I would have -" Dr Aurelius begins. Peeta quirks an eyebrow at him, a move that he, himself has practiced.

"No you wouldn't," Peeta disagrees. He doesn't know if that is true, not really, but it feels real and that is enough for him. "You want to know about Katniss."

He doesn't say the next line, the one he repeated in his sessions after a comment like that. _Everyone wants to know about Katniss._ The set of Dr Aurelius' chin and the sadness around his mouth tells Peeta that he hears it anyway.

"You want to know how you can get through to her," Peeta clarifies. Dr Aurelius sighs. There must be a list, somewhere, of the patients that the staff here has failed with. He wonders how long it is, what number he falls on.

"I need to know that, yes," Dr Aurelius corrects him lightly. There must be some determined people in District 13, to be able to get these stubborn Capitol people to bend to their will. If they take him up on Johanna's offer, Peeta will meet them himself soon enough. It will take more luck than he has left not to be flattened by them.

"You can't," Peeta says simply. Dr Aurelius' face lights up with fury and he half turns towards one of the orderlies, as though about to order Peeta back inside. Peeta stares him down, and he can't keep a cruel smirk off his face. "You can't get through to her, not if she doesn't want you to. She doesn't work like that. The more you push, the more she's going to run away, preferably after putting an arrow through your head."

Dr Aurelius starts. Peeta hadn't meant to remind him of President Coin; he was referring more the the wild animals that would attack her in the woods. It's much the same principle, he supposes. Both animals and people were stripped of the things she needed, then left alone to rot.

"So you have no advice for me, then?" Dr Aurelius asks, anger simmering under his voice. If the Capitol were still in charge, Peeta would be starting to expect he would wake up one morning to a silent attacker slitting his throat in his bed. Even as comparatively powerless as they are now, it still wouldn't surprise him.

"I said I'd try to get her to talk to you, and I will," Peeta reminds him. He rubs at his shoulder, at the place that a bag strap would sit if he had anything to take with him. He was ordered to pack a week ago; he had sat alone on his bed for an hour, staring at a room empty of anything that could be called his own. "But the only real way is to have something she wants, and trade her for it. It's the only thing she understands."

"And if I don't have something she wants?" De Aurelius asks him, sagging a little. The sympathetic part of Peeta would offer a nugget of sympathy, or hope, if he had any. In absence of that, all he can offer is truth.

"Find something," he advises lightly. "Or give up. She'll never come to you, and I don't see any reason why she should have to."

The laws and sentences and other government things Peeta doesn't care about hang in the air between them. He can see Dr Aurelius stand straighter, but the part of him that would have exerted his authority now is the part that Peeta broke in his last session. Peeta can see him struggling for it, confused as to where it went. It is such a small thing, but he is proud of it; maybe now the doctor will understand what it is to his patients, when they lose things they care about.

"Well," Dr Aurelius says finally. He takes his key and inserts it in the lock. Peeta watches each movement avidly, holding his breath as the small piece of metal slides into the hole. The breath starts to burn when the doctor refuses to turn it, and Peeta is about to say something, to protest, when Dr Aurelius sighs and flicks his wrist.

The door opens silently, without the large creak or whoosh that Peeta thought the moment deserved. It is a little anticlimactic, after all his wishing, that his freedom should come as simply as moving his feet forward until they touch grass. There is a group of people behind him, the doctor and his staff, and he thinks they must be waiting for him to say goodbye. He considers turning around, fulfilling that small social obligation, but then the thought occurs to him: he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to ever again.

So instead he keeps walking, down the path from the institution and out the gate. The train station is situated almost directly outside it and Peeta spends a full minute contemplating whether that is to help people get in, or to get out. He thinks so long that he almost misses it, as it comes rushing into the station, and he is almost onboard before he realises that he has no pass that will let him travel between the districts. Only the most special of cases are awarded them, and they require Capitol permission.

"Well, come on then!" A man dressed in a strange uniform says impatiently. Peeta, who has one foot on the platform and the other on a shiny silver step, looks up at him.

"I don't have a transport pass," he admits helplessly. He looks around him, but there are no staff with his written orders, no doctors to tell him what to do. He puts his hand to his chest and breathes more heavily to help fuel his wildly beating heart. He doesn't want to be stuck here, but he has made no arrangements to get home, and he has no one to call to help him.

"Don't need one of those anymore," the man snorts derisively. Peeta looks in the carriage, at the mix of people who are from so many different places he would need to count all the Districts to name them. He grabs on to a handle and pulls himself on to the train, watching the uniformed man carefully to make sure that it isn't a trap for him, ready to spring as soon as he is unprepared.

As soon as he is completely inside the doors slide closed and the train begins to pull away. Unsteady on his artificial leg Peeta staggers towards an empty seat by the window with a table all for him. He has nothing to put on it so he traces patterns, spirals, flowers and random lines. He can see them all in his head, a miasma of colour and mess, and he smiles as he thinks of one day putting them on a canvas.

They are in the middle of the Capitol, and it will take a while for it to be behind him, but seeing the institution fade out of sight from the corner of his eye is enough. He is not going home, not really; he doesn't have one anymore. He is going somewhere, though, and for now that is enough.


End file.
